The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

 "Radiation's rising. Still, one mustn't grumble too much.

I'm full of sesations from this extraordinary film. It contains multitudes. It is, I admit, my only experience of a Spike Milligan (co-)script, full of irreverent absurdity, the sort which wqould later begat a less overtly successor in Monty Python.

Thetre is much more, though. Despite the very British humour that anchors everything, this is a cinematic adaptation of an absurdist play that feels like Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, which is high praise indeed. It's a post-apocalyptic world, set in the near future to 1969, with absurdity upon absurdity. Yet it's grim, in the traditions of Ionesco and Beckett. Indeed, the constant cynicism in the face of nuclear annihilation and the equally cynical, yet glorious, skewering of the British "stiff upper lip" denies us even the consolations of existentialism.

Despite this, the humour is exquisite. Realism being abandoned, we may use the setting to skewer British behaviour. Hence Arthur Lowe (genius casting) as the father, leaning heroically and deeply into another sort of comedy. I suspect, in person, over a pint, he would have been no Captain Mainwaring. Despite Peter Cook, Michael Hordern and others, his performance stands out. Beyond, even, that of Nurse Marty Feldman.

I can only urge you to saee this triumph of British comedy cinema which, deaspite its clear absurdist bent, is full of genus humour of the type one may expcct. You MUST see this film.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

"If the good Lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates...”


It’s an alarming thought that this film was made when Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a recent children’s novel. But 1971 was a long time ago, and inevitable comparisons with Tim Burton’s 2005 adaptation (not a remake; merely a different imagining of the same source material, so I haven’t broken my rule by blogging that film first) must reflect that.

This film may not have Burton’s remarkable visual style, striking though it is on its own terms. It cannot quite live up to the vivid and wonderfully surreal chocolatescapes of the novel; instead it has Gene Wilder, not an actor I have always admired, in the role he was born to play. He is extraordinary. His Willy Wonka is wry, highly intelligent, fatalistic about being surrounded by unkind, uncultured, venal fools. This is one of the most charismatic, and quotable, characters in the history of cinema.

There is much else to enjoy, though, such as Tim Brooke-Taylor’s comic cameo and, for us Doctor Who fans, recognising Bill from Day of the Daleks. The Oompa-Lookpa songs, while much truncated, are still entertaining, and most of the songs are not annoying. Most of them. There are lots of nice little comedy scenes surrounding the search for the golden ticket to raise a titter from the adults watching. The film is a triumph, hugely entertaining and, in spite of yielding to reality at times, surprisingly faithful to the book. If only there’d been a sequel with Vernicious Knids...

Black Mirror: The National Anthem

“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.

Blake's 7: Gold

“I’ve got a criminal record.”

“Hasn’t everybody.”

I seem to start every single Blake’s 7 review these days by saying that I don’t know who the writer is and, er, I’m going to do it again now. So, Colin Davis: who he? Well, I dunno.  Even my good friend Wikipedia can’t help me with this one.

This is a fairly middling episode, really; a simple bank heist with a fairly ho-hum twist at the end. It starts well, though; I always like to see episodes of Blake’s 7 start as Star Wars films do, with cool-looking ships floating through space.

We’re soon introduced to Keiller, an old friend of Avon, played by a suitably shifty Roy Kinnear. Aside from outlining as much of the details of the heist as the unravelling of the plot requires us to know at this point, we’re clearly shown that Keiller is not to be trusted. He has an interesting line to Avon, too: “On the grapevine, my friend, you’re getting to be big news.” Avon’s reaction suggests this is unwelcome news. He isn’t Blake; he recognises that notoriety will not do any good for his chances of survival.

With the necessary exposition over with, the scene switches to the initial phase of the heist with admirable speed. Our heroes have to do something there to ensure they can convert the “black gold” into proper gold again once the job is done. As this is a drama and dramas need conflict, things don’t go well, and we spend quite a few minutes wondering whether Avon and Soolin are dead. Soolin, incidentally, is starting to acquire some character traits. Only some, mind you, but we’re beginning to establish that she’s efficient, no-nonsense, slow to trust people, self-reliant and fearless. This might all add up to a fairly generic character type, and she still has no hinterland whatsoever, but you have to start somewhere.

We now begin to get some answers from Keiller; he’s being employed by persons unknown, but we all immediately guessed it would be Servalan, right? I like the concept of the entire space cruise being a sham to cover up the delivery of gold to the Federation on Earth, mind. Even better is Avon’s explanation of how it is possible to dupe the passengers (“I imagine they have chemical help.”

I’m very conscious with Blake’s 7 that the teleport can create quite a problem for the sense of threat: how can the characters be in danger if they can be immediately teleported out. Davis finds a neat and very cheeky solution; teleporting the gold would immediately destroy its value. Hah!

The heist itself is quite clever and well-executed, but once again Avon and co find themselves in some very murky moral areas. Not only do they shoot an awful lot of security guards throughout the episode, but Keiller murders an unarmed doctor in cold blood. They’re all accessories to that, I’m afraid. It hardly makes our “heroes” look heroic. But then, I think that’s the point. They are criminals. Yes, they’re politically opposed to the totalitarian rule of the Federation, but they’re not nice people and they never have been.

It’s eventually revealed that Servalan has planned it all- of course- and Keiller gets his comeuppance. But, in a final twist, recent financial developments mean that their money is worthless, while Servalan is in possession of loads of gold (“We risked our lives to make Servalan rich”). Everyone seems to be pretty scathing of Avon; will there be consequences? And once again there are signs that he’s not quite right in the head any more, laughing hysterically at his own misfortune…