Serenity

As a major fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and therefore given to praising the very earth that Joss Whedon steps upon, I'm a little biased in favour of Serenity. Slavish fandom asides, it's not unreasonable to say that his writing for Buffy has generally helped to raise the level of genre television over the last decade - the people behind the new Doctor Who series admit openly that they owe a debt to the vampire slayer. Added to that is the fact/popular opinion that the Buffy episodes directed by Whedon tend to be among the show's best.

With Serenity being his debut as a big screen writer-director here's a chance finally to see the qualities that Whedon has brought to the small screen realised in the cinema. He has written for the screen before, but bad things tended to happen like other writers speeding off with the credit, or French directors ruining his scripts. Given how the quality of moviemaking has lately slipped into a commercially-driven cesspit of unimaginative, derivate, remakes, sequels and knock-offs, we can only hope that Hollywood at large takes a tip or two from Whedon as the TV-making community has.

It's been a popular comment in reviews for Serenity that George Lucas could have taken a leaf from Whedon's book - or preferably the whole damn thing - while putting together his turgid and often idiotic ("Noooooooooooooooo!") Star Wars prequels. I don't think Lucas is the only Hollywood bigwig who has assumed that if people are presented with spectacle they will be oblivious to the quality, or lack thereof, of the writing.

There is a slight irony in that Whedon's big screen break came virtue of a small screen snub. Firefly - the show that Serenity is, effectively, a sequel to - was cancelled by Fox after just a dozen episodes (the morons at Fox can also take credit for cancelling another excellent show, Wonderfalls, but that's another story). In a turnaround which still has many in the grip of wide-eyed wonderment, Whedon refused to give up and managed to get a feature film greenlit. He brought the original cast along, reworked his storyline for Firefly's second season (which reveals some key background to one of the main characters, as well as some major events of galactic proportions - not surprising he didn't want to let it lie) and now we have Serenity.

That's a rather long winded introduction to a review that doesn't really have much more to say than: Serenity is excellent, go and see it!
There are some criticisms levelled at the film, revolving around its small screen origins, which complain that it still looks like a TV show. It does, but it has to be said that most TV shows these days look pretty damn good, and in this case I don't mind if the effects budget is a little tight when the script is so good. I think he made it on something like a tenth of the budget of Revenge Of The Sith, and it's at least ten times more rewarding, ten times less tedious, etc.

If I did have to pick a personal criticism it's that Gina Torres' second-in-command is a little underused, and doesn't seem to have much more to do than be a kickass chick in space. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but when Whedon has taken care to make sure the audience gets to know every other character it's a bit of a sore point. Maybe there's some deleted scenes lined up for the DVD though.
Another downer is the arbitrary killing off of one of the main characters near the end. It provided a minor emotional jolt, but seemed clear that it was only written in to make sure that we viewers knew that people could really die here. Sure enough the next scene had me convinced that almost the entire rest of the crew were going to be killed off, but I'm not sure if an arbitrary character death was needed for that effect.

There's also an obvious comparison to Buffy. Whedon has largely borrowed his own Buffy backstory about a group of men who create a girl with superpowers so they can send her off to do their killing. It doesn't really make the film any worse, but with Whedon's next film being Wonder Woman, you begin to wonder (ha ha) if stories about women with super powers are all he can write lately.

There is plenty that's good though.

Along with an opening that trips you up at least three or four times (you think one thing is happening, then you realise something totally different is happening, and so on) Whedon has noted down almost every popular cliche from action and sci-fi movies and worked out how to turn it into something original. These are some of the best lines in the movie, so I won't repeat them here - instead just go and see it!
Also, as mentioned, by the end of the film the audience is familiar with virtually every character. Gina Torres aside, there are no characters who merely provide background, everyone has their part to play.

And the acting is terrific. Chiwetel Ejiofor was excellent, but he generally is, and is a seasoned screen actor. The surprise is how good the TV cast is. All too often TV sci-fi shows have too much ham on screen - this is partially due to the lack of rehearsal time, but also due to the fact that some of these people just plain can't act. This doesn't seem to be the case in Serenity. Everyone holds their own on that big screen, and if Nathan Fillion doesn't get some juicy roles in the next year then Hollywood should just give up now.
Finally, in case you missed it the first time - Serenity is excellent, go and see it!

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Oct 27th 2005 12:51 // Reviews // 2 comments

The Beach - Alex Garland

I'd avoided reading The Beach for years, irrationally dismissing it as pretentious tosh for the middle classes. This opinion was partly derived from the fact that everyone seemed to be raving about it as soon as it was published - usually something that will consistently get my back up. Also, it seemed to me that the sort of people were raving about were pretentious middle classers, and other irritating people who would inevitably lay claim to the book with? lines such as ?Oh, I can SO relate to that??

Of course, I was wrong about all of this - aside from the pretentious middle classers, they're all still out there and as annoying as ever.

I saw the movie of The Beach on TV a few years back and found it interesting enough to pick up a second-hand copy of the book. I'm always keen to see how a book evolves from page to screen and will often read books of films I've enjoyed (not novelizations, please - though The Abyss was quite good). This enthusiasm to directly tap into the literary source of the film resulted in the book sitting on my shelf for the next couple of years until finally I decided it was time to read it. Maybe I just wanted to leave enough time for the film to fade from memory.

The first surprise for me was that while Alex Garland is a capable writer, he's not a great one. I found this strangely comforting. During my period of Beachy-abstinence I had generally assumed that it was a dense, literary novel, and one that was probably prone to passages of magic realism. Like most people, dense, literary novels leave me feeling daunted and inadequate as if my puny brain isn?t up to the meagre task of reading words.

Fortunately this wasn't the case. The Beach is eminently accessible, even if you haven't been to Thailand - and neither does it rub your nose in the fact that you haven?t been to Thailand. Garland also makes the central character, who is a bit of a twat really, come across as fairly sympathetic, which is no mean feat.

In general a satisfying read, but I sense that Garland may be one of those writers who just has one good book in him. I can't say I feel the urge to pick up The Tesseract or The Coma just yet.

Come to think of it The Coma sounds quite interesting...

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Sep 14th 2005 15:51 // Reviews // 1 Comment

Lego Star Wars

Considering how much of our time at Cawthorne HQ we spend playing games? it?s actually probably not that surprising that we haven?t gotten around to writing about any of them until now.

Lego Star Wars is really the ideal game to christen our games review section as it has that ideal blend of tongue in cheek kitsch geekdom which tends to flavour many of our favourite things. On the one hand it?s Star Wars, which is geekiest of the geeky. It?s also Lego, which is kitsch retro joy, and the tongue in cheek (tongue in geek? Eeuw!) aspect is self explanatory.

I noticed this on the forthcoming release list at Play.com sometime earlier this year, and the reviews started appearing around April. Amazingly the reviews were almost all positive ? not only was this a game I wanted, but it was supposedly pretty darn good too.

Once it was available I downloaded the demo, only to find that our PC (which does a pretty good job of playing Half-Life 2) was no good for Lego Star Wars. Seems to me that it wouldn?t have been so hard to make it downwards compatible like, oh, just about every other game that comes out on PC, but it wasn?t to be. Fortunately Sendit.com had a good deal on the X-Box version and ? given that this sort of game is probably best played on a console - we snapped it up.

The premise is very simple. You run through a series of scenarios based on the prequel trilogy (six chapters for each film), playing as whichever characters are appropriate for the given scenario. It?s tempting to suggest that the great Lego recreations which precede each chapter are actually more effective at getting the story across that Lucas?s painfully inept dialogue. For one, these Lego scenes don?t actually have any dialogue. For another, I actually enjoyed watching these animations, whereas enjoyment is something I don?t readily associate with the prequel trilogy. He had his chance with Sith and he blew it!

But I digress?

Part of the appeal of Lego Star Wars is that it?s three games in one. You initially play in Story Mode, which simply involves moving chronologically from chapter to chapter, playing as whichever characters the game selects for you, with the aim simply to get from beginning to end.

Once you?ve done that you can then go back and attempt to collect all of the ten Lego canisters that are hidden away in each chapter. (When you collect all ten you get a Star Wars vehicle made out of Lego ? not a real one sadly, but you do get to park it in the virtual parking lot.) Some of the canisters can only be reached by characters that have special abilities (such as jumping, jetpacks, using dark force powers, ducking into vents) so you need to pick your characters carefully before you re-enter the chapter.

The third option is to achieve Jedi Master Status on each chatper. This is done by collecting the required number of Lego studs on each chapter. Some are easy, some are all but impossible. I sadly had to resort to an invincibility cheat to attain this on the last three chapters. Frankly when it took two of us working co-operatively to fail to achieve Jedi Master Status on one particular chapter (and take over half an hour to do so) I figured cheating or genocide were the only realistic options.

Each time you achieve JMS on a chapter you get one piece of a superkit. It soon becomes obvious that the superkit piece is the Tantive IV (??) blockade runner seen in the opening of A New Hope and the end of Sith. Accordingly you also unlock a bonus chapter which turns out to be the very opening of A New Hope.
At the end of this bonus chapter you see ?To be continued??. I only hope they do the classic trilogy because, while the gameplay in Lego Star Wars is excellent, it is nevertheless tainted by its association with the relatively dismal prequel trilogy.

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Aug 30th 2005 14:26 // Reviews // 1 Comment

The War Of The Worlds - Jeff Wayne

It?s about time we reviewed something musical. I first heard what I shall irritatingly refer to henceforth as JWMVOTWOTW sometime in the early eighties, around the time I saw my first pirate copy of E.T. I can?t say I was hooked from the first listen, but when someone eventually lent me a cassette copy I do recall listening to it enough times to warrant a punch in the face.

At the time I was aware that it was something of a guilty pleasure, like discovering that you actually enjoyed listening to some of your parents? records even though they just didn?t get the likes of Lush or Faster Pussycat (while a bit of reciprocation would be nice, I think the entire fabric of society might unravel if kids and parents really started listening to each other?s music, which still wouldn?t be as bad as kids and parents wearing each others? clothes).

Now I feel almost as if listening to, and more significantly enjoying, JWMVOTWOTW underscores the fact that I?m not actually a teenager anymore. It?s not that I suddenly think it?s an underground classic worthy of rehabilitation, or an accepted classic in the Beatles/Stones mould ? it?s still just as geeky and kitsch as ever. Rather it?s as if this is the music older people are supposed to listen to, along with the entire Sting back catalogue and selected classics by Frank and Ella.
Anyway, enough with the insecurities. I do enjoy JWMVOTWOTW, and shamelessly so, and the fact that it sometimes reminds me of that disco version of the Star Wars theme only makes me enjoy it more. I love crap music, and I love great music, and often the two are closer than you might think.

This new SACD version is fully remastered and remixed and, if like me you own a SACD compatible DVD or CD player, comes in glorious surround sound. Reissuing the album to tie in with Spielberg?s movie was a predictable marketing decision at best, but doing an entirely new version was a stroke of genius ? the album has never sounded better, and seems to be selling by the bucketload once again.

There?s little point doing a straightforward review of the album ? really, you either love it or hate it. Jeff Wayne, the man himself, made a fortune writing advertising jingles (such as ?Get the Abbey Habit?. With Abbey Natioooooo-naaal?) so it?s no surprise that there?s at least a dozen riffs from various tracks that will stick in your brain like mental fishbones. He also makes some wise decisions ? he doesn?t make Richard Burton sing, and he doesn?t try and get Justin Hayward to act. Both of those might have just been potentially too painful.

Apparently there?s a CGI movie planned. This could be great fun, actually getting pictures to go with the music, but it might also backfire. The album, while it doesn?t necessarily conjure up literal images in your head, does a very good job of bringing the right mood across ? the eeriness of the red weed, the flabby gelatinous mass of the martians, the desperate final battle of the Thunderchild ? and having actual images running with the music might actually diminish that. With pictures to distract you the music may well lose some of its impact.

What I am almost embarrassingly excited about is the prospect of a live performance. It could be disastrous, but, given that great live music has something that a recording can never convey, it could also be great. There is the small fact that Richard Burton and Phil Lynott are dead, and David Essex is probably a little too old now to play the idealistic young artillery man, so some recasting will be essential.

As long as they don?t get any Z-list tabloid celebs to do it, or someone embarrassing like Sting, then it should, as they say, rock.

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Aug 25th 2005 14:37 // Reviews // No comments

Sahara - Clive Cussler

So why am I now reading Clive Cussler, having successfully ignored him for all these years? Since you ask, here are the reasons:

1. I saw the film (pretty obvious that, really);
2. I enjoyed the film for what it's worth and wanted to, as it were, find out more;
3. As a rule I'm interested in the process of adapting books into films, what gets changed, what gets chopped, and so on.

I've read a couple of books (Wonder Boys and The Ice Storm spring to mind) where the films have matched the source novel fairly closely but haven't been afraid to make a few changes, generally for the better. I've seen others (Blade Runner) where the similarities are fairly superficial, but the film has nevertheless developed into something good in its own right. I've also seen others (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) where a series of unnecessary changes have been wrought for the sake of commercialising the venture, and the result is a steaming pile of visual faeces.

With Sahara the plot of the novel is substantially different from the film. The characters are the same, the situations are the same, and the starting and end points are the same, but the path between them is significantly altered. The film did a very good job of translating the plot to cinema, bringing in an element of mystery, trimming down the character list, and boosting the presence of others (such as Eva Rojas).

The book is an equally good read, though I suggest Clive Cussler should drop his complaints against the film makers and accept that novel and film are two very different forms.

Cussler falls into that ever popular category of authors who are not particularly accomplished writers, but do know how to string an exciting plot together and keep those pages turning. Dan Brown is the exemplar of this - a truly atrocious writer who writes books you just don't want to put down. At least in Sahara I can believe that Cussler, an experience diver and adventurer himself, is writing from experience and can bring some degree of authority to his prose, rather than stringing together second hand theories and cynically contrived plotlines.

Not that Cussler is free of all literary charges. One thing that reeks in Sahara is Cussler's handling of exposition. In a book exposition is easily dealt with: the author can simply add any necessary background information as needed by including it in a paragraph of text. For instance:

Diving is a dangerous business. To survive underwater for lengths of time a diver will need a mask and an oxygen tank.

The writer is then free to carry on the story and dialogue, safe in the knowledge that his reader knows what is required for diving expeditions. In TV and film it's a little trickier. You can't necessarily assume that the viewer has any common sense, or knows the first thing about diving, so these points will need to be covered either in dialogue, or preferably, using visual cues (such as a sign saying: Don't forget your mask and oxygen tank while diving, lest you drown!).

With all that taken on board, why oh why does Cussler insist on putting most of his exposition in dialogue? A typical exchange in Sahara would be:

"Don't forget your mask and oxygen tank, Dirk," Al pointed out.
Dirk shook his head. "Not much chance of that. As we'll be spending an extended period underwater I'll need both of those to make sure I don't drown."

The major problem with this, and with almost all the exposition in the book, is that the characters would already know this, and would no more remind each other of these basic facts that you or I would remind each other to put one foot in front of the other on a repeating basis in order to walk forward.

Nevertheless, Saraha is an entertaining read. There's no shame in reading a book for pleasure or simple diversion, despite what they might say in the Times Literary Supplement (I say might because I have never to this day actually read the Times Literary Supplement). Dirk Pitt is an appealing old-fashioned hero - tough, moralistic, and with a MacGyver-like ability to extricate himself from virtually any hopeless situation. There decent villains to get your teeth into, and there's even a strong environmental message.

Who knows, I may even read another?

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Aug 4th 2005 15:03 // Reviews // 3 comments

War Of The Worlds

Steven Spielberg returning to good honest blockbusters is certainly good news for the rest of us. While his recent films have hardly been lacking (actually The Terminal might have been, but Catch Me If You Can has its fans, and even Minority Report provides a decent two hours' entertainment) you no more want to see Spielberg helming middle of the road dramas than you want to see Keanu Reeves tackling Shakespeare (again), or Steven Seagal in a musical romantic comedy.

Back in the eighties, and most of the nineties, you could usually rely on Spielberg to provide your summer entertainment. Even when he was only producing you'd end up with Gremlins or Back To The Future. But, in the days and years since Jurassic Park, the blockbuster forum has been thrown open to filthy hacks like Michael Bay and Stephen Sommers who, if there was any justice in the world, would be back serving burgers behind a franchise counter. I can only live in hope that if Steven Spielberg were to return to the blockbuster forum full time then this dream might just come true.

On the evidence of War Of The Worlds, Spielberg can still deliver. Pretentious as it might sound he has a total understanding of the language of cinema and effortlessly thrills his audiences, while pulling their other strings as needed. In fact Spielberg's talent is in hiding those strings. The willing deception of cinema - your investment in the proceedings - is lost once you, as an audience member, key into what the director is trying to do. You sit and watch one of his films and find that even a rubber shark can't erase the exhilaration of Jaws, whereas the overuse of really crap CGI in something like Van Helsing can bring you crashing right back to your cinema seat.

While the 'wow' factor is still present and correct, Spielberg has also brought something to the party from his grown-up films. You'll all remember how the opening of Saving Private Ryan, or much of Schindler's List made you feel. When people die in those film it has a real impact, largely because these things really happened. In your typical summer popcorn movies when people die it's all part of the fun (except when they want to Have An Emotional Moment or, sometimes, Teach A Moral Lesson). In War Of The Worlds it's not fun: thousands of people are dying and humanity is on the brink of destruction and it's both bleak and terrifying. You can actually believe this is the apocalypse which (and I'm not the first person to say this) makes War Of The Worlds something akin to the Schindler's List of blockbusters.

This is all part of the emotional rollercoaster however. Most people will probably go to the film expecting something like Independence Day (another cinematic abomination, but a fun one at least - just try and tell me what fun there is to be had from a limp, yellowing piece of cinematic lettuce such as, to pick a random example, Van Helsing), wherein there was never any doubt that the day would be saved, and by the Americans of course.

Here (if you don't already know the story at least) you really feel there's no chance. That at least makes it different. There are some stunning effects - the tripods are outstanding, the emergence of the first tripod particularly effective - but it is the emotion of the film that carries you through. You have the visuals, which you want from your blockbuster, but you also have the qualities that made Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan such compelling viewing.

You also have some expertly handled characters. We all know that a good script can become worthless in the hands of some directors. We also know that the Flawed Hero has become a hackneyed and artificial device to fool us into thinking we're watching real people on the screen. With all credit to screenwriters Josh Friedman and David Koepp, War Of The Worlds does bring us some genuinely believable characters.

Tom Cruise plays his hero like a 40 year old adolescent, a guy who shuns his responsibilities and generally proves to be a complete twat within the first ten minutes or so. His teenage son is, not surprisingly, unwilling to do as he's told - stealing his Dad's car early in the movie, and then acting impulsively through (most of) the rest of the movie. Equally the daughter may be the sensible, mature character at first, but quickly succumbs to almost uncontrollable bursts of panic and fear once the Martians arrive.

In short everyone's selfish and annoying at times, everyone displays their better qualities at others. It's a brave and confident director that presents you with people that you wouldn't necessarily want to hang out with, and then takes you along with them through the entire movie (for another good example of this try watching Monster).

There were a few problems with the film. The rushed schedule, I imagine, made the finished piece a little disjointed. Particularly in the final half of the film our characters seem to lurch from one scenario to another, as you might expect to do in a computer game. There does appear to be a large chunk missing prior to the final scene, though I understand the book ends rather abruptly.

There's also part of me that would have loved to seen/heard the opening titles with that old da-da-daaaa playing over them - you know what I mean, don't pretend you don't!

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Jul 29th 2005 18:24 // Reviews // No comments

The Stand - Stephen King

I just finished reading The Stand again for what must have been the third or fourth time. It's always been one of my favourite books, but I think I enjoyed it even more this last time - this is despite having recently watched the TV adaptation (which prompted me to reread in the first place) and consequently having fairly good idea of what was going to happen.

As I'm not going to bother summarising the book, for a basic introduction visit the wikipedia page here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand

There's not really much to write about - the best thing I can say here is to go off and read the book if you haven't already done so. It is slow, but never ponderously so, and it does take a long time to get where it's going, but you'll still be sorry when it's over.

One element that might be slightly unnerving is the superflu that takes out 99% of the human race. Although the 1990s setting (updated from the original 1980s setting in this "author's cut" edition) removes the story a little from reality, it's still interesting to bear in mind the impending bird-flu epidemic that people keep warning us about. While I don't expect that to take out 99% of the world's population, it's still the closet frame of reference to a global pandemic that you're likely to have while reading The Stand.

Another frame of reference to keep in mind is the very geographical nature of the good vs evil conflict. In the book the good guys are in Boulder and the bad guys are in Las Vegas (how fitting), which creates something of an east vs. west scenario.

While it's hard to correlate the ideologies of the characters in the book with the current "good west" v.s "evil terrorist east" climate, it does again provide an interesting parallel to the present day.

Personally I think the "good west" is almost as bad as the "evil east" (in different ways) but that's a different argument. One thing I did perhaps notice for the first time on this reading is how Stephen King is actually quite careful to illustrate that some of the people in Las Vegas are generally decent folk, albeit scared and taking themselves down the wrong path. Equally, the good folk of Boulder are not all that good - there are joy riders, alcoholics, budding militants, and general whiners (of course there's also Harold and Nadine, but they were technically impostors all along).

In short this is not heaven and hell (which I think George Bush would just love us to imagine is the status of the war on terror) but just people - some go the right way, some go the wrong, and there are decent folk and corrupt folk on both sides.

Strangely enough this isn't one of Stephen King's favourite books (among the ones he's written) but it is a lot of other people's favourite book (among all the books that have been written).

As far as I know it isn't in any way connected to the REM song Stand, either.

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Jul 24th 2005 13:33 // Reviews // No comments

Fantastic Four

Prior to seeing this vaguely awaited film my principal contact with the Fantastic Four was when, in the very excellent The Ice Storm, Tobey Maguire's character draws a comparison between his own family and the superhero quartet (the same point is levelled in Rick Moody's equally excellent book, for the more literarily inclined). His point, in my understanding, was very simple: as the Fantastic Four are superheroes, they have superhero-sized problems, but underneath it all they are just another dysfunctional family.

Therein lies the problem in bringing any Fantastic Four movie to the screen. The characters are superheroes, ergo the film simply must be of blockbuster-sized proportions, with enough blockbuster style special effects and set pieces to keep Billybob Redneck, Little Johnny and Captain Three-Pints-Before-The-Film munching happily on their popcorn.

However, you've also got to respect the source material and ensure that the elements which made the Fantastic Four great on the page also make it to the screen. This means you've still got to have the dysfunctional family.

So, to sum up, what we need is lots of explosions, riveting action, a great script (well, duh) but all in the company of people you'd as like run a mile from if you encountered them in real life. That's a real challenge. Luckily there was one company willing to take it on. That's right - Pixar!

Yes, The Incredibles did a brilliant job of bringing the Fantastic Four to the screen and how they didn't get sued by Marvel is a miracle in itself.

Of course, Fox must have been dismayed realising that in no way could their impending Fantastic Four movie in any way equal The Incredibles. To add to their dilemma was the fact that to move significantly away from the template set up by Pixar's film would result in a significant deviation from what constitutes the Fantastic Four - you have to have a monstrously strong man, a girl who turns invisible, a character who can stretch body parts to unnatural proportions and, even, a hot-headed youth who revels in his abilities. You have to have the bitter opponent who is obsessed by the fact that he is not as powerful as his nemeses, and you also have to throw in all the business with this family basically not getting on 100 percent all of the time.

Hmmm.

So, taking all that on board, what do you get when you sit down to watch Fantastic Four? Well, it's not as bad as the advance word would have you believe, but neither is it anywhere near as good as it ought to be.

The problem is amply illustrated right in the very first scene. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm (at this point very much human) gaze upwards at a vastly oversized statue of soon-to-be nemesis Victor Von Doom, which itself is overshadowed by a gargantuan monolith of an office block. The intent is to imbue a sense of scale and awe in the audience. The actual effect is one of the most underwhelmingly limp opening scenes of any movie in recent memory (Star Wars Episodes 1 and 2 excepted). If the aforementioned intent had been otherwise then it could have been passed off as 'understated', but this is a blockbuster and if you want your opening scene to look like a TV show then you're sitting behind the wrong camera.

A sense of scale is really what's lacking throughout the movie. In the early scenes there's a background shot of a pretty state-of-the-art looking shuttle launch pad - it's there, we've seen it, now we want to see what it does. But no, we cut straight to the shuttle flying in space (incidentally this would have been a great opening scene). Does any remember that old stage advice that says if you show a gun in the first act you damn well better make sure you've used it by the third?

In the film's defence the first few pages of script do a very deft job of establishing the relationship between all the characters. This is likely credited to Michael France whose original script, so the word on the virtual street goes, was right on the money. In fact there are several genuinely excellent scenes and witticisms (such as when a foreboding Johnny Storm greets Ben Grimm after their return from space) scattered throughout.

The real problem is with the director. You have to ask yourself why would Fox choose a totally unproven, wet-behind-the-ears director like Tim Story to helm a major picture like this, when Sony hired a genius veteran like Sam Raimi for Spider-Man. I think the answer is something like this: Sony wanted someone they could trust to take Spider-Man and make it great, whereas Fox wanted someone who would jump to the line and say "Yessir!" when summoned. Sam Raimi doesn't do that - any director who has proved he knows what he's doing behind the camera wouldn't do that - but Tim Story just might.

The signs are all there in the final script as well. There are moments of genius intermingled with moments of predictable, by-the-numbers film-making. When you get someone who knows how to run a business to design a website the results are often crap because the ability to turn over a few thousand in a year does not mean that you know what looks good on a page (in fact it probably means you're the sort of person who wouldn't have a clue). Equally, people who know how to run film studios do not know how to make great films, and great films are what people want to see. And yet people who run film studios, especially Fox it would seem, continue to think they know how to make films.

With Fantastic Four you get a film that deserves to be good, that at some point may well have been great, but which has clearly been meddled with to the point of mediocrity. These people just shoot themselves in the foot time and time again, and never learn.

Even Fox, it seems, didn't have the courage of its own convictions. There is clearly a sense of budget-wrangling at play with Fantastic Four. The film, despite the $100 million or so spent on it, looks cheap. The effects are largely confined to two set pieces (incidentally, I think that Mr Fantastic will always look crap on screen unless they find some way of reimagining his abilities - an arm stretching like elastic will always, always look like one of those cheap, popular Photoshop plug-ins no matter how much you spend on it), there is no sense of scale, and even the plot suffers from similar economics.

Having Dr Doom afflicted by the same cosmic storm that gives the Fantastic Four their powers is an economical way of introducing the villain of the piece to the audience at the same time as the heroes, but it's unimaginative and the character suffers from massive underdevelopment during the central portion of the movie (in the third act he pretty much goes from being a little bit pissed off and looking a little bit off-colour, to being totally deranged and wearing some incongruous Dr Doom outfit he's cobbled together from a handy, previously unseen wardrobe).

There's still scope for a good Fantastic Four movie. Both Chris Evans (as the Human Torch) and Michael Chiklis (as The Thing) were excellent (in fact I'd go so far as to say that the pair carried the movie). Ioan Gruffud was likeable, though a little young, even Jessica Alba, though bland, put in a decent enough performance, and I'd be more than happy to see Julian McMahon (Dr Doom) again with some better lines to tuck into. Without the need for a genesis story there's plenty of room for some real drama in the sequel.

You executives just run along and find the money, that's all you're there for, and leave it up to the filmmakers to do their job next time, eh? Maybe even Tim Story will have cut his teeth by then.

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Jul 22nd 2005 15:22 // Reviews // No comments

Sin City

After seeing Sin City two of our friends described it as the best film they'd seen, and one found it disturbing and sick. Naturally this was essential viewing.

Luckily they were all right. Sin City is one of the first films - if not the first and only film - I've seen where the overwhelming use of CGI has actually been entirely justified. Too many filmmakers are dipping into their toyboxes these days and using CGI for anything and everything. So what if the director wants to 'express his imagination' or give us an 'adventure beyond imagination' (eh? Beyond imagination??)?

Guess what, the audience has plenty of imagination - it's how they can sit in a darkened room for two hours and pretend they're off somewhere else. And what about things like 'unprecedented visuals' or giving the audience something 'they've never seen before'? Let me remind you - Jaws had a dumb looking rubber shark, which didn't even work properly by all accounts, and it's one of the best films ever.

The Twit Brothers had millions to spend on The Matrix Unloaded, promising it would be unlike anything we'd ever seen. It was shite. And there's plenty of that around. But I digress...

The point is that Sin City, the film, probably couldn't have existed without CGI, and if it had it almost certainly wouldn't be the live action graphic novel that Miller and Rodriquez managed to create. In fact, even in black and white - especially in black and white - Sin City is one of the best looking films I've ever seen. Forget George Lucas, the so-called grandmaster of the digital revolution. The murky monochrome backdrops of Sin City are far more inspiring visually than anything I've seen in the overstuffed Star Wars prequels.

Fortunately there's more than just pretty pictures to look at. I've read only one of the original comic books, but its clear that Frank Miller has taken the pulp noir style and, pretty much like he did with Batman, reinvented it for a new age. This is the classic Spillane, Spade, Marlowe style but using characters that would leave Bogart a bleeding, pulpy mass in the gutter. The men are all but indestructible, kill without hesitation when they have to, and seem to be loyal only to the women around them. The women, meanwhile, are tough as nails - though arguably still fit into the male comic book fantasy scenario and generally need the men to come to their rescue. I'm sure there are some reformed males somewhere in Sin City, but they're probably lying in the gutter with old Bogey. Likewise clean-living, independent women have no place in Sin City either. Were you expecting Dawson's bloody Creek?

I do have two complaints. The first is Jessica Alba. I will admit I'm already biased against her, with her lack of personality, vacant eyes and bleach-blonde hair. She was easily the weakest link in an otherwise incredible cast. Her sappy (lack of) persona did rather suit the sappy character she played ("Oh I tried to fall in love with other boys, but it was only ever yoooooo"), but she was clearly out of her depth and didn't really deserve to be appearing in this movie. Also - and this might be a male perspective - but don't sign up to play a stripper and then complain to the director that you have a problem going topless or bottomless. What if Robert de Niro had signed up for Raging Bull and then told Scorsese: "Yeah, but I don't really want to do any of that boxing"?

Other than that the film was maybe a little long (that said I'm looking forward to the DVD which will reportedly feature all three stories uncut - difference is I won't have to sit and watch it all in one go). Also, Mickey Rourke was great, about time we saw him doing his stuff again. In short: go and see it!

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Jun 23rd 2005 15:16 // Reviews // No comments