A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

I watched an episode or two of the television series many years ago... but hesitated. Should I not read the novels first? And so, during the Coronavirus plague, I started on the first novel, began to enjoy it... and alas, could not continue, as life was simply too overwhelming and would not stop.

Now, finally, I've read the first novel and oooooh... I see exactly why these novels are so revered. George R.R. Martin has produced a fictionalised mediaeval world that feels real, characters whom one feels one knows, and prose in which to get drunk. Reading this novel is a rich and fulfilling experience, and I have many more to go... possibly with a final novel to go unritten, but for now, I care not. 

Martin is, I suppose, an epic fantasy equivalent of Patrick O'Brian, of yetbeyond his genre. His setting, the continent of Westeros, has the sense of deep history that Middle Earth does, as the book takes us from a loose kingdom united under a week king to a state of utter chaos and civil war, and does so via chapers that each focus on the viewpoint of a single character, all with their own view, desires and quirks.

The situation is, I suppose, similar to the Wars of the Roses, yet there is no exact parallel: one cannot say that the very unpleasant "King" Joffrey is wholly based on Edward IV, for example. The fantasy elements are kept light, yet- at the ending especially- they are there. One cannot help but feel that, as Caetlyn fears, the men of Westeros will cause so much death and destruction fighting each other.... and we know, as she does not, that Danaerys is waiting.

Exquisite.

I plan to alternate A Song of Ice and Fire with another novel until I've finished. So, a shorter novel next. Then A Clash of Kings...

Generation X (1996 TV Pilot)

 "No one's touching my butt!"

So this is a very, very obscure '90s TV pilot for a vaguely X-Men-themed series that never led to anything, mainly because the pilot is so awful. But it's fascinatingly awful.

I stopped reading Marvel comins around '93-94- I was sixteen, turning to other things, plus in hindsight I wasn't quite as enamouredwith how things were going, the shiny covers, gimmicks, endless first issues, the lack of respect shown to writers as opposed to big name artists who promptly sodded off to Image Comics anyway. But apparently this is based on a title from after my time, where a bunch of new mutants (no, not those ones) are taught at a secong, spin-off mansion by Banshee and Emma Frost, who is apparently a goodie now.

Apparently some of the characters are based on equivalents from the comics, although only those whose powers are easier to do on television. The only characters I know are Emma, Banshee and Jubilee... who, incidentally, is played by a white actress. Yeah.

What's frustrating here is that this is a concept that could have worked. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the format or characters. There's some nice world-building, with the Mutant Registration Act, the lack of civil rights for mutants, and the sheer injusticeof it all, although it's not entirely clear to me whether or not Emma's "Xavier school" is known and sort of tolerated by the authorities.

No, it's basically just a really bad script for this pilot that makes it fail. The baddie, Russell- played by Max Headroom himself- is not related to mutants at all but just wants to control people through their dreams. Oh, and dreams exist in a "dream dimension" which is a real, physical place. And mutants have a particular sensitivity to said dimension for reasons of plot convenience.

Matt Frewer chews the scenery with aplomb as Russell, and is the best thing in this, at least being entertaining. But the tone is all over the place, as is Banshee's accent. None of the other characters are remotely likeable. There's a scene where a whole board of directors have a simultaneous fart and... yeah, it says a lot that this is probably the best scene.

Still, bad though this is, it's fun to watch, in a car crash sort of way.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Every now and again I set myself a bit of a literary challenge, and force myself to read a long, difficult bit of literary fiction. This is one of them. I've never read David Foster Wallace before or, indeed, anything that might be considered eidetic literature, which Infinite Jest may or may not be.

It is, indeed, a challenging novel: the first couple of hundred pages are difficult as one wends one's thinbking round the many characters and their foibles; the occasiionally non-linear narratives and the many absurdities- the Wheelchair Assassins and everything about them; the cross-dressing CIA agent; tennis; Alcoholics Anonymous; the PGOAT (prettiest girl of all time) who is improbably disfigured; suicide by microwave. Ostensibly, this novel is about a short film so perfect it kills you through pleasure, and this idea certainly features, but it's less central to the novel than one might imagine from plot summaries.

No: the novel is a meditation on addiction. Addiction to what it would call Substances, for which the film is an obvious metaphor. Addiction to absurd political causes. Addiction to competitive sport. Addiction to all that wtwelve step nonsense of the Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous cult, itself no less damaging than chemical addiction and responsible for spreading so many dangerous myths on the subject.

As for the novel's structure... yeah. Plot threads develop. Characters enter and leave. Literary style changes like a chameleon. One cannot glibly and neatly summarise the plot or shape of this novel. I won't claim to have understood it: does anyone? But perhaps that's not the point. This novel is, shall we say, an extremely rewarding ideal.

Expect my next novel to be rather more in my comfort zone- I've earned it- and not to take so damned long.

Scream (1996)

 "There's a formula to it. A very simple formula.

Best horror film of all time? That's a hard question. But this is a work of genius. It does a lot of violence, but as much of it is directed at the fourth wall as to the killings of Ghostface.

The metatextuality is as exquisite now as it was then. I mean, watching this in 2023 one winces at the passing of time, that we no longer living in a world of landlines, video shop and the great state of California being guilty of judicial killing. Yet we have Randy outlining the rules of how not to get killed in a horror movie. We have a character declare that A Nightmare on Elm Street was great but the sequels were not, in a film directed by Wes Craven. Hmm. We have so many references. After this point, is a straight, non-metatextual slasher truly even possible?

This is a wonderful thing, a B movie genre turned into very clever, if very fun, riffing on all sorts of postmodern stuff. It's very clever indeed. Yet it's accessible.This is a Hollywood horror hit. And it's not lowbrow. There is hope for humanity, and this is the highlight of Craven's career.

The cast is superb, although the ensemble outshines Neve Campbell. The opening set piece is the perfect set up, with Drew Barrymore selling it to perfection. Yet, despite the very meta humour, the whole thing is structured as a perfect slasher, with the big reveal handled very well indeed. This is, simultaneously, a superb horror film and a superb deconstruction. One of the best of its decade.

Fargo (1996)

“You betcha, yah.”

I admit, somewhat sheepishly, that this is only the second film by the Coen brothers that I've seen. Given the evidence, firstly of O Brother, Where Art Thou and now of this splendid little film, I’m forced to say they are real giants of the Hollywood scene over the course of the last twenty plus years.

This is wonderful from the very first shot, as a brilliant white snowscapes is punctured and illuminated by car headlights. In spite of the North Dakota title (and there’s a state we European tourists are unlikely to visit) the film is very, very Minnesota. I love the accent, with the “yah” and the ineffable Teutonic hints of the otherwise all-American vowels of these characters with mostly very Germanic surnames, with more than a sprinkling of Scandinavia. Presumably those Viking social democratic genes are what led the good burghers of the state not to vote for that moron Reagan in ‘84, like everybody else foolishly did.

William H. Macy is perfectly cast as Jerry, nebbishy car salesman and ultimate cause of all the mischief as his desperation over his immense debts leads him to concoct a kidnapping and ransom plot for his own wife. Also superb is Steve Buscemi,  playing his usual sort of character. But Frances McDormand is a revelation as heavily pregnant cop Marge, interrupting brilliant bouts of seduction with less brilliant bouts of morning sickness. After this film I fully understand why they cast McDormand as the voice of God in Good Omens.

The characters all feel real, it’s beautifully shot, and as a narrative the whole thing is simple awesome. I feel a slow Coen Brothers binge may be on the cards.

Mars Attacks! (1996)

"For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest..."

I saw this once in the ‘90s- at a festival, I think, perhaps Phoenix ‘96. But I was very drunk, and let us not discuss any herbal substances which may or may not have been imbibed. Let us also, in the same token, disregard the bottle of Aragonian wine (yes, the bottle states it’s from “Aragon”, a name from the annals of history) that I have just imbibed at the time of composing this paragraph. Let’s just say that, yes, I can see this film is no classic, but it’s fun.

Tim Burton is always brilliant at making his films feel likes stylised worlds of their own, but he generally has his own gothic style. This film, like its superb predecessor  Ed Wood, gives us a style very different from Burton’s norm- in this case that of the ‘50s flying saucer movie. Hence the many CGI saucers look exactly as we might expect from countless movies. Hence the ever-present sound of the theremin. And the Martians, in old fashioned stop motion, look awesome.

Oh, and the film is bloody hilarious. No, it’s not the funniest film ever, but it’s a fun little spoof and extraordinarily well cast- Jack Nicholson is superb, as ever, as the cynical President. Pierce Brosnan is hilarious as a character taking the piss out of all those pipe smoking, exposition-spouting professors. Also excellent are Sarah Jessica Parker and the wonderful Pam Grier, with a small role for a Michael J. Fox presumably too far into his Parkinson’s disease for a larger role.

It’s also very, very ‘90s- Richie dresses just like I used to back then, and the less Grungy fashions are... yes, well. But the film is enormous fun, with its capricious Martians putting people’s heads on dogs’ bodies and zapping US Senators. And can we please have a Martian do you Trump what is done to the President here?

Trainspotting (1996)

"I haven't felt that good since Archie Gemmill scored against Holland in 1978."

This is one of my favourite films of all times, and it’s quite inexcusable that I’ve waited until I’m 550-odd films in to blog it. It’s superb; creTively directed, delightfully non-linear in its narration in a very post-Pulp Fiction way, perfectly cast, hilarious, devastating, and based on Irvine Welsh’s truly awesome novel.

Watching it again for the umpteenth fine, although for the first time in at least fifteen years, is how the charming, intelligent, outwardly sympathetic Mark Renton is actually a complete bastard. Yes, he’s complicit in the neglect and death of baby Dawn after he introduces the baby’s mother to heroin, but at least he’s not a parent. Yes, it’s unfair that Spud goes to prison and not his middle class self. Yes, he makes a lot of money in a big heroin deal, although as he doesn’t betray Spud I don’t think he needs feel any guilt about double crossing Sick Boy or Bregbie. No; they deserved all they got. But Tommy? He loses his girlfriend because Renton tricks him into letting him have a video having sex with Lizzie, causing Lizzie to leave him. Then the clean-living Tommy, devastated, asks Renton for heroin, which he gets. All this directly leads to AIDS and his horrible death, which is entirely Renton’s fault. But he’s negative.

Renton may have the privileges that come with being bareTir, but he’s as much of a bastard as anyone in the film. It’s just that he gets to cover it up with his middle class ways. And I bet none of his mates would have had the option of moving to London and making loads of money in the property business.

Sick Boy, despite of his amusing obsession with Sean Connery and his despair at Dawn’s death, is a grasping, cynical, amoral bastard. Begbie is a a monster of the type that far too many blokes have in their social circles. But Renton is as bad as any of them, and I think that’s what Welsh and Danny Boyle I tend us to conclude.

Still one of the greatest film ever made. I love the wit, I love the style, I love the worst toilet in Scotland, I love the nostalgic glimpse of a branch of John Menzies. And the soundtrack is awesome.

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)

 "Are you threatening me? My bumhole will not wait!"

 I last saw this in, well, the '90s. On a VHS videotape that was my prized possession. It’s brilliant, of course, and a style of humour (“Heh. You said ‘anus’!” that has lasted.

I suspect Mike Judge is no metalhead, and this fan of heavy guitar riffs is a bit suspicious that people like my young ‘90s self should be portrayed as such thickos. Thing is, though, it’s funny.

It’s weird seeing Beavis and Butt-Head in a whole movie, doing no less than a road trip with Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, instead of just watching the telly as is their wont. But it works, thanks to good old puerile humour done with an evil wit, and Robert Stack is superb.

It’s also very, very ‘90s, though, from the perspective of 2018- teenage Chelsea Clinton’s braces, teenagers actually watching the telly, a very ‘90s kind of youth culture-focused nostalgia for the ‘60s and ‘70s leading to that glorious Robert Crumb psychedelic bit in the New Mexico desert. One could almost say that bit was genuinely cinematic.

Well done, Mike Judge and co; cavity searches all round. The campaign for a sequel with middle-aged Beavis and Butt-Head starts here!

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

"Yeah, he's right. Peter Cushing does that all the time.

It's been twenty-odd years since I last saw this film and it is, in hindsight, even better now than it was then, courtesy of some truly splendid direction and a sparkling script from the premier exponent of metatextual hyper-violence, Mr Quentin Tarantino.

The film is, of course, famous for feeling like typically Tarantinoesque crime caper until the final forty-five minutes of the film where it suddenly pivots genre and introduces a load of vampires and magnificently rattles through a load of vampire tropes like a boss. Throughout it all both the dialogue and the delightful levels of violence make the film an absolute pleasure to watch, and the acting (Clooney excepted as the pretty face but Tarantino very much included) is top notch throughout.

The whole thing really does come across as just effortlessly masterful and splendidly cinema-literate to boot, and that's before a particularly alluring Salma Hayek and all her mates at the Titty Twister (love the name) turn into vamps. But the final scene provides a superb explanation of exactly why the place has always been home to vampires leeching off the public. Magnificent in every way.

Matilda (1996)

"Are you being smart with me?"

I devoured all of Roald Dahl's children's books as a little boy but I must confess, dear reader, that I'm a little too old to have read this one. Still, it's Dahl to a tee: books and imagination are good, TV (see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Gradgrindian adulthood are bad and there's plenty of kid-friendly grotesques of the kind all good Roald Dahl tales demand.

The film is directed, interestingly, by your actual Danny DeVito, who also plays Matilda's wilfully ignorant and ethically deficient father. Her alienated home life is eventually replaced by school, a British school, as apparently British schools are strict, one of those odd American stereotypes.

The biggest grotesque of the lot is headmistress Miss Trunchbull, who looks very kinky with her strict sexy uniform and riding crop, and who is rumoured to use several gloriously outré punishments which no parent would believe.

She is counterbalanced by the rather nice Miss Honey. I'm reminded at this point of an old sketch by The Mary Whitehouse Experience (remember them?) who pointed out that Charles Dickens called all his good characters names like "Mrs Lovely" and all his villains  names like "Mr Complete Bastard". Roald  Dahl is very Dickensian in that sense, gloriously and unapologetically so.

The film (and, I assume the book) is an impassioned cry for reading and learning and a furious cry against the sort of inverted snobbery against learning and culture that keeps the poor ignorant and powerless. The message is perfectly pitched to children in this furiously moral film. Matilda is a heroine for speaking out against the Trunchbull's cruelty, and soon sets out to investigate the truth behind her headmistress, typical Dahl protagonist that she is.

There's a happy ending, of course, with our telepathic heroine being adopted by that nice Miss Honey. I suspect the book has more life to it than the film, but this is a fun little adaptation.

Crash (1996)

"The car crash is a fertilising rather than destructive event."

This strange, disturbing yet beautiful film is, unforgivably, the first David Cronenberg film I've done for this blog; there will most definitely be more. This film caused a great deal of fuss at the time because of it's subject matter, but I assume we are all grown up non-Daily Mail readers who accept that sex is part of life and we all have our fetishes. The difference here, of course, is that the fetish in question is dangerous to both the participants and others; one cannot reasonably accuse the authorities of intolerance.

Indeed, the film makes no attempt to get us to sympathise with its protagonists; we are as alienated from them as they are from society. And yet, although the film has been relocated to Canada, the main character is named "James Ballard" as per J.G. Ballard's novel which, I must confess, I have not yet read. This is an interesting decision: why does the author choose to identify himself with such a character?

I suspect the answer lies in what the novel and film have to say about society. Cronenberg shows us an unremittingly urban landscape, a world of buildings and freeways and automobiles in which nature is seldom to be seen. Our characters- Ballard, his wife Catherine, the widowed Helen, the creepy Vaughan, the broken Gabrielle and the nihilistic Seagrave, exist in a very urban world where the individual is not in any way part of a wider community and where it is possible to associate only with people like oneself. All of those characters shown to be sexually active are polyamorous, in open relationships, with heavy hints towards bisexuality. Even sex is removed from any sense of human connection.

Without connections to society or any feelings of love, sex becomes mechanistic and nihilistic, pure instinct. And, while urbanisation is a clear theme, I think the main point here is a link between sec and death, with our characters' sex drives linking to their death drives.

Because that is what our characters have; death as a fetish. Seagrave is the prime example, found dead by Vaughan having re-enacted the death of Jayne Mansfield without him. And the last scene  shows Ballard comforting Catherine after the crash fails to kill her: "Maybe the next one, darling." And then they have sex beside the crashed car.

Probably the highlight of the film is a massive car crash which is treated by the camera as porn, a hugely effective clash of style and content as the camera lingers erotically over buckled bonnets and bloodied faces while even the soundtrack tries to tell us we are watching porn.

I cannot identify with this link between sex and death. Sex is not death; it creates life. Sex is two fingers up at the Reaper. But this is a beautifully developed motif, and this is a beautiful and philosophical work of art that deserves all the praise it gets. 

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

“If love be rough with you, be rough with love.”

I’ve always been in two minds about Romeo and Juliet. On some days I find it a genuinely affecting romantic drama. Trouble is, though, behind Shakespeare’s wonderfully eloquent language lies a plot which tempts you to take the piss; it’s such an uber-melodrama it half takes the piss out of itself. And this is a young Shakespeare, closer to the blood and gore of Titus Andronicus than to his most acclaimed tragedies; the play is certainly less reflective and philosophical than his other more well-known plays, and much more about the set pieces.

All of which, of course, makes this play gloriously cinematic, and an opportunity which Baz Luhrmann has grabbed with both hands. This film is brilliantly set area city of “Verona Beach”, an ultra-modern, sun-soaked urban sprawl plagued by gang warfare between the Montagues and the Capulets. The potential anachronisms are wittily handled: there is a police officer called “Captain Prince”, and both “sword” and “longsword” are brands of gun, which is a stroke of genius. The narration, of course, falls to a newsreader. As for the cast, Homeland’s very own Claire Danes is superb, Leonardo di Capio is decent enough, and Miriam Margolyes is Miriam Margolyes. Basically, it rules. There are even nice little in-jokes on the billboards for us Shakespeare geeks.

It’s great to see the imagination on display for the set pieces- the initial Montague ? Capulet scrap happens, with guns, in a petrol station, and it all feels uncannily like the climax to an episode of The A-Team. We have the gayest Mercutio ever, allusions to ecstasy (how very ‘90s), a hugely gay party at the Capulets’ crib, and lots of colour and spectacle.

Even so, this is Romeo and Juliet, a play written about two young lovers, disturbingly early on in their teens, who die tragically because Romeo is pretty damn stupid. There’s lots and lots of Catholic imagery, of course, and I’m reminded that Father Lawrence is a suspiciously positive depiction of a Catholic priest for Elizabethan England, which reminds one of the theories on Shakespeare’s supposed Catholicism. Be that as it may, it’s weird to see Pete Postlethwaite doing an American accent.

It’s a brilliant depiction of the play, right down to the closing titles happening to Radiohead’s Exit Music for a Film.