American Gods

I finally got around to reading Neil Gaiman's tale of ancient gods squabbling in modern America.  It is a big book filled with nice characterisations and some stand out scenes, but it never seems to become anything more than the sum of its parts.  Well written though it may be, the climax is weak, the premise equally so.  The ostensible villains of the piece, a collection of new 'gods', hardly warrant the name and often you get the feeling that this just wasn't thought out well enough.  A subplot concerning an ideal American town with a dark secret, is grafted on with only a modicum of relevance to the main plot.  It's almost like Gaiman wanted to fit so much into his great American novel, that he felt obliged to include a pseudo-detective story as well.  It's all very entertaining (and I believe there's a television adaptation in the works), but not nearly as important as it thinks it is.  Much more engrossing are the extracts from Gaiman's website dealing with the process of turning his manuscript into a best-selling book.

Ray Bradbury RIP - A Star Dies

The grand old man of fantasy and sci-fi is dead. As a kid, his name under a title was a sure sign of quality and I grew up with Bradbury's star shining brightly in my firmament. As I grew older, his light occasionally flickered (I didn't like some of his later short stories), but purple prose and all, he was a true original. (To think one of his first stories was 'The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms'....) We are definitely the poorer for his passing. It's probably appropriate that his death was marked by an astronomical rarity like the transit of Venus across the sun. He was a far more impressive rarity. He'll be missed, by me especially.

Weary, Woeful Wheatley

Reading wise I had to give up Dennis Wheatley's "The Haunting of Toby Jugg". With an interest in the horror genre I feel it is incumbent on me to try out such writers, but there's only so much I can take. A right-wing polemic full on nauseating jingoism and anti-semitism. Bear in mind that this book is set during the Second World War in Britain; the only Jewish character is an amoral Communist spy working for Russia and trying to marry an British Labour party member in order to infiltrate Government. On top of this the story is dull, predictable and, considering it is supposedly a horror novel, distinctly lacking in scares. Indeed the strapping airman at the centre of the story (an heir to a multimillion pound empire no less), a man used to facing death a hundred times over in the air, spends the book in mortal fear of a shadow! The villain of the piece is just short of twirling his moustache. All in all a dreadful piece of claptrap. I stopped halfway through and have now started a novel by Norman Mailer.
Just to show I was trying to give Wheatley a chance, I also watched a little known Hammer film adapted from another of his novels, "The Lost Continent". Borrowing from Hodgson, Haggard, Doyle and a host of other turn of the century fantasists, it is the worst mishmash of seafaring junk I've ever had the misfortune not to throw up over. Avoid!

Midnight in Paris

'Midnight in Paris' is Woody Allen's latest, so there is no real need to summarise it. It has a group of rich people playing straight man to an Allen-esque neurotic artist in a beautiful city. Hhhhmmmm. Is it any good?
There is a genuine sense of warmth about the whole enterprise that has been lost from Allen's movies in latter years. You feel like he really cares about his subject matter, ie. Paris of the Twenties. It probably helps for me that I share his affection, but there is a nice thrill seeing Hemingway, Stein, the Fitzgeralds, etc. brought to life. For a while at any rate. Pretty soon, with no real belly laughs to distract you, it can all seem like name dropping ('Oh, look there's Djuna Barnes!'). I mean will anyone really split a side at Owen Wilson giving Bunuel the plot of 'The Exterminating Angel'? On the plus side, Owen Wilson makes one of the best Woody surrogates in a long time, Cotillard draws the camera, and Adrian Brody makes a memorable Dali. The rest of the cast spout their lines as needed, but with little real conviction or dimension.
Just an observation, but Allen does not use many close ups, at least not to convey real emotion. There is one of Wilson as his predicament dawns on him, but this is too broad to convey any subtlety. Another is of Cotillard, but really only to show how pretty she is. In fact when I think of Allen's movies, even the serious ones, this is almost a trademark and probably explains why I see him as rarely emotionally intense. He flits across the surface using quips and farce to distract us from the basic shallowness of his people games. Even 'Hannah and Her Sisters' features a man (Caine) in lust, not love, and the really serious films play, well, like plays. Which is not to say plays are without emotion, just that they are performed at a distance. Allen plays at a distance.
Yes, this is a glib analysis, but I think it says something that the most emotional close shot I can remember is also in one of Allen's more successful films, 'Manhattan', as he sees his 'true' love for who she is just as he must let her go.
Anyhow 'Midnight in Paris' has no real emotional depth and no real, deep insight, but it does ring more authentically than many another Allen film when you sound it for emotion. Granted it is the love of the director not any of the characters, but it is a feeling I can appreciate nevertheless. Guess he's just good with cities.

Thor

I'm really starting to get tired of all this superhero stuff.
Just as Ang Lee seemed an odd choice for 'Hulk' (and he was), Kenneth Branagh is not the kind of director you would automatically associate with a Marvel comic book adaptation such as 'Thor'. Funnily enough though, he is more appropriate than any of us had a right to think. Branagh manages to find the 'luvvie' side of Thor; an arrogant, uppercrust toff speaking cod Shakespearean English with a devoted band of jovial warrior friends and a veteran Shakespearean actor for a father (Anthony Hopkins). He is cast out of his privileged life to mix with the plebs (ie. beautiful human scientists like Nathalie Portman). Indeed, with his love of brawling, broad humour and comical arrogance, there is something very Falstaffian about this 'Norse god'. So a bit "Henry V" then. Those perpetually cheery friends add a sprinkling of "Peter's Friends". Loki's sibling machinations echo any number of Shakespearean villains, while wise old king, Odin, offers a good stand-in for Lear. Worst of all though is the general jovial sense of cosy safety that pervades everything. It's 'Much Ado About Nothing' only about nothing.
Which is not to say that for all the shadow of the Bard, that this is anything more than a shallow pantomime. Much as I have liked some of Branagh's directorial work in the past, I always felt he failed to get below the surface, even with a play so foolproof as 'Hamlet'. Here shallowness is the name of the game. Healthy lust masquerades as love, while showy bravado pretends to be courage. The story calls for Thor's character to mature and sure enough he goes from brash and childish to gentle and considerate. That this happens in almost one scene is difficult to accept though. We get no real sense of development, just a sudden shift from one end of the scale to the other. And it is questionable if this change is actually a maturing of character; much as courtly kissing of hands might appeal to some people's sense of romance, isn't that kind of romance just as naive as the brash brawler's bon homie. Only Tom Hiddleston's Loki manages any real depth, and to be fair to the scriptwriters, his character, rather than being made a conventional villain, is given a level of complexity befitting the Norse original. Still, it's more hinted at than properly explored.
I have other minor gripes. Patrick Doyle's music, for instance, is annoying and lacking in any real sense of wonder. I never really liked his work, though Branagh who uses him extensively, obviously does. Here he gives us the requisite bangs and booms, but it's by the book stuff.
The effects didn't impress me either, at least in the Asgard sequences. I have no qualms with CGI, and I don't really object to stylised effects sequences, but here the world of Asgard is so obviously artificial as to warrant comparison with a cartoon. I must qualify that though, by saying that it is a reasonably original conception, and ugly though elements such as the rainbow bridge are, they do chime well with the original myths.
I'm being grumpy and I know it. There is nothing monumentally wrong with 'Thor'. It is good, honest family fare and liable to sell a lot of action figures to kids coming to Norse myths for the first time. Even it's anti-war (or at least tempered militarism) subtext is refreshing in such a mainstream film. But I cannot help but lament the missed opportunities in superhero movies such as this. Comic book superheroes are modern fairy tales and like their earlier predecessors, they navigate notions and emotions otherwise difficult for a young (and sometimes not so young) audience.
In the book, 'Men of Tomorrow', the history of the American comic book is detailed. Many of the creators of these costumed heroes were the children of poor Jewish immigrants, and grew up in urban worlds full of crime and poverty. Their creations were a reimagining of their struggle for a better life and provided a tentative fantasy solution to real-life dilemmas. In this sense superhero stories constitute the myths of today. We shouldn't trivialise them and with the money Hollywood is throwing at them, we shouldn't have to.
Okay, gripe over. Bring the kids.

Don't You Just Love It!

I watched a documentary on how Paul Dirac proved how something comes from nothing and then how the Big Bang's ultimate creation of difference is all due to the vacuum fluctuations affecting the initial explosion. Then I happened to be reading about the Lamed Wufniks, the 36 Righteous people of Jewish mythology, whose existence proves to God that Humanity is worth keeping. If they learn of their own purpose, they'll immediately die and someone else will take their place; but that's unlikely because they're too humble to ever believe they could be one of the Righteous in the first place. At the end of the day, which is crazier! Science and religion. Wonderful stuff!

The Adjustment Bureau

What would you do if you got to peek behind 'reality' and see what's really going on? And what if the plan for the universe didn't quite harmonise with your own? Matt Damon's David Norris must deal with these very questions in 'The Adjustment Bureau', George Nolfi's directorial debut.
Philip K. Dick's original story, 'Adjustment Team', is no masterpiece. As a fan of his work, even I have to admit it's a pretty weak story. It is also one based on a stolen premise. The original, and far, far superior story on which Dick bases his tale, is 'Yesterday Was Monday' by the vastly underrated Theodore Sturgeon. So I have no qualms with Nolfi (scriptwriter of 'The Bourne Supremacy' and 'Ocean's Twelve') taking large liberties with Dick's story. And he does, to largely beneficial effect. To the timeworn theme of free will and determinism, he brings a refreshing sense of importance; it is practically the whole point of the film. (Nolfi is a former student of philosophy, throwing up his PhD to tackle Hollywood.) He also fashions what has to be the most romantic movie of the year.
Matt Damon, giving a winning performance, has the world at his feet. Although he loses his initial attempt at election to the senate, it is clear success is just around the corner. And then he accidentally meets the woman of his dreams, Elise (Emily Blunt in another winning role). The fact that the whole universe is against this relationship doesn't stop him jeopardising his career, his sanity, even his life to pursue a woman he barely knows. If this seems a little crazy, it is, and if the story seems absurd, it is very, very absurd. But in the face of such old-fashioned and well-realised romance, who cares?
'The Adjustment Bureau' is being marketed as some sort of sci-fi Bourne movie. It is not. Firstly it is more theology (albeit cod theology) than science fiction, and secondly, despite Damon's presence, it is a much more meditative than the Bourne blockbusters. This is a fantasy love story, in the tradition of 'Somewhere in Time' or 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'. Absurd or not, how can you resist?
I couldn't.

A Child Across the Sky

A Child Across the Sky
Part of the same fictional universe within which his "Bones of the Moon" and "Sleeping in Flames" occur, Jonathan Carroll's "A Child Across the Sky" is a strange meditation on evil, art and cinema. After director Weber Gregston's best friend commits suicide, he is supernaturally summoned by his friend (via videotape) to complete his friend's slasher movie. Among those aiding him in his task is a little girl who may or may not be an angel.
The more I read of Carroll the more I am torn in two, but in this novel that is not only right, but almost the point of the story. The complexity of life, both physically and morally, is a prime concern for Carroll. He wants a black and white order, and sometimes succumbs to its allure (witness the climax of 'Bones of the Moon'), but he is fully conscious of the falsity of such a perspective. I still feel he is a romantic who ultimately underwrites all his work with this binary division, but he's no fool and his explorations of the theme make for some fascinating writing. Good may be real, and Evil too, but they play a very bewildering game of chess. Everything is compounded of this confusion. The richness he almost fanatically brings to his characters is proof of this.
In creating a rich, fictional world (one with recurring characters and its own consistent history, eg. the great Californian Earthquake), yet one that shares some characteristics of our own world (eg. an airport terrorist attack from the Eighties) he inevitably generates a certain alienation in the reader. The constant references to films never seen (because they were never made) is annoying, for instance. It seems to highlight Carroll's hunger to be on celluloid (according to IMDB he's only participated in the production of one, 'B', movie).
His very real influence on Hollywood is all over this tale. From 'Drop-Dead Fred' to 'In the Mouth of Madness', the seeds of much of common cinema culture is contained (and originates) here. People have been 'borrowing' from his work for ages. (Ironically part of this story is concerned with just that kind of theft.) He does this kind of dark fantasy better than any of them (yes, including you, Mr Carpenter!). But, and this is probably part of the reason for his failure to be realised on screen, his bizarre events often serve as springboards to pungent philosophizing. The rationale for their happening (eg. a bird tattoo coming to life) loses much of its persuasive power (when indeed it is persuasive) once divorced from these ramblings.
Of course, he borrows too and much of this book is plainly inspired by the Freddy, Jason, Candyman and Pinhead movies that haunt the contemporary horror genre. 'Candyman', for instance has a score by that pop minimalist, Philip Glass. Carroll has rival minimalist Steve Reich as the composer for the films of his fictitious monster, Bloodstone. Of course what isn't acknowledged is that Steve Reich just happens to be Carroll's half-brother. Jokes within self-referential jokes is the Carroll way. If there is one common thread in his work though, it is the eruption of the fantastical into the real world and vice versa.
The ending to 'A Child Across the Sky' left me angry. Rightly. Tied up quickly, though ambiguously, it was a typical Carroll ending, but all the more memorable for that. I hated it. I loved it. Damn it, he's good.

Coincidence No. 23

Today after reading a particularly nasty story by Clark Ashton Smith called 'The Seed of the Sepulchre', it struck me that this type of horror is akin to a car crash; we know it's all going to end badly, but we can't look away. Indeed the 'enjoyment' is that almost 'pornographic' voyeurism 'enjoyed' by accident witnesses. Tired of this 'torture porn', but happy at my encapsulation of this subgenre with the term, 'car crash' horror, I picked up Jonathan Carroll's 'Child Across the Sky' and started to read it. To divert myself from Smith. A fifth of the way into the book (five minutes ago), I was reading a fictitious film maker's account of reading a friend's script, a screenplay for a horror film: "I called it car-crash art -- you don't want to look, but you have to...." Okay, my original idea wasn't so original (and neither was Carroll's), but really....

Books and Brain-busting

I've read a few books in the last few weeks: Philip K. Dick's 'Galactic Pot Healer'; Philip Jose Farmers' 'A Feast Unknown'; Jonathan Carroll's 'Bones of the Moon' and tonight 'Sleeping in Flame'; as well as an assortment of short stories and philosophy. I hope to write about each in time, but 'Sleeping in Flame' has left me just a little annoyed(?). It has the feel of something developed as it is written, with all the unpredictability and fun that that implies, but also a lack of discipline and superficiality. There's a great mind at work, but doing what exactly? It's like having Faulkner write a script for 'American Pie'. The ending, the very ending, is so typically Carroll, and is appropriate on one level, but it's one that serves to trivialize everything that has gone before. Although the Magic Realists have been mixing fantasy and reality for ages, Carroll does it in such a 'full on', indiscriminate way, that the very nature of his fiction becomes the subject of his fiction. It's post-modernism on acid. And I've kind of come down rather abruptly. I'll write about it all again when I've gotten my mind back.

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

Watching Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is like immersing oneself in a compendium of almost every fantasy tale you can think of. Using the frame of "Hook" (realworld grown-up gets drawn into a fantasy world of their youth), the main narrative of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (reluctant hero must save fantasy land from tyrannical queen), the doubt of Thomas Covenant (hero must believe in the reality of the Land) and bits and pieces of George and the Dragon, Excalibur, "Spirited Away", to mention but a few, the movie somehow manages to lose sight of one of the greatest stories of them all; "Alice in Wonderland". And in its maniacal determination to appeal to a new audience by speeding ahead with its derivative narrative, it forgets to develop any characters, apparently trusting to our previous love of the original books' cast. You can't have it both ways. If you want to appeal to an audience unfamiliar with the more leisurely and cerebral delights of Carroll's original stories, you can't also depend on their familiarity to flesh out 'iconic' characters. It's a disappointing mess of a movie with Burton squandering what should have been a golden opportunity to shine in a genre he is meant to excel at.
And what's with "Underland"??????????? Going from 'Wonder' to 'Under' pretty much sums up the movie.
Curiouser and curiouser.

P.S. Some quarters may have thought Burton would bring a 'darker edge' to the tale. Well, if that's what you want see Jan Svankmejer's 'Alice' (still gives me nightmares) or the Dennis Potter scripted 'Dreamchild' (creepy in far too many ways to mention;could have sworn I already wrote on this).

Mr. Nobody

Mr. Nobody - A Very Big Something of a Movie

I know I am going to be in the minority on this one, but Jaco Van Dormael's "Mr. Nobody", his first English language movie (and his first since 1996; what's that all about!), is a place where science fiction, fantasy and poetry all come together, and something of a triumph. A kind of reworking of 'Slaughterhouse Five', for the Chaos theory age, "Mr. Nobody" features Jared Leto as, well, quite a few incarnations of the same person, all with different lifelines, and all struggling for the things we all want.
Van Dormael shows himself to be a fan of sci-fi with references to Alfred Bester (the tattoos of the doctor), Sturgeon (the guys setting up reality), obviously Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick (well, there's Mars, and timelines, and...), but that's really all window dressing to a poetic concern with choice, loss and possibility.
To my mind it brings back good memories of his earlier "Toto the Hero" (remember the dancing flowers and that song, 'Boom!' ). That movie dealt with alternative histories, choice and Fate too. However, whereas most European directors who make an English language movie rein in their preoccupations for Hollywood, Van Dormael really goes further out here than ever before. For many it will be over-ambitious. It is a difficult movie to stick with, and one that will not leave you with easy answers. But hell, I bought it! And I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it in a few other realities too....

Ink

Ink - the kind of dream movie Hollywood should be making (instead of that other one with Leonardo Di Caprio...)


When it comes to films about dreams, and speaking as an admirer of the work of Chris Nolan, forget the bloated budgeted 'Inception' (yes, I'm still bashing that one). Instead look to the little known little film, "Ink".
Set in a fantastical world where those who give you nice dreams - the Storytellers - battle those who give you nightmares - the Incubi - the story centres around the enigmatic Ink, neither one nor the other. While the two sides go about their nightly business, he kidnaps a young girl sparking off a rescue mission by the Storytellers. It's much more complicated than that of course and interwoven with Ink's travels are several layers of story that perhaps might not bear too close a scrutiny. However, accepting a dream logic entirely appropriate to the tale being told, it all hangs together surprisingly well.
It's also stunning in many, many different ways. The originality of the story extends far into the production itself, giving the whole enterprise a unique feel. For instance, the Storytellers all appear in flashbulb pops of light, while the Hellraiser-ish Incubi appear out of shadow wearing eerie grins and strange screens on their faces. Drums are used to open portals from one dreamscape to another, while 'drifters' mark territory between the principal factions. Jamin Winans' direction too is far from conventional and heightens the unsettling atmosphere. The overall effect is to create an authentic fantasy world with a well-developed mythos that stands up well against more famous creations like Oz or Middle-Earth.
Archetypes, common to the genre, are also used originally. Take the Holy Fool character of the Pathfinder. As played by Jeremy Make he jumps far too easily from 'wacky' to 'angry' and, resenting the performance, one could easily dismiss him. However, we don't (well, I didn't); he cuts a memorable figure for all the actor's limitations. Blind, wearing duct tape crosses over his eyes, he is attuned to the rhythm of the life, chanting a metronomic "1,2,3,4" as he navigates the world. Initially irritating, this chant builds to become a powerful motif, culminating in one standout sequence where he sets off a chain of events just to 'shake the shit' out of someone. Like a string of dominoes, a street artist painting a picture somehow triggers a car crash. It looks dreamlike and even more importantly feels magical.
All this despite the cold hard reality that this movie was made for peanuts. It features no one you've ever heard of and didn't even get a distribution. In fact the legend has it that it was made for €250,000! This is simply insane, especially given that it plays Hollywood off the pitch on every level. There is no major fantasy film of the last ten years that takes the chances 'Ink' does and wins.
The legend continues that when no company would take up the film to distribute, the only way the film could be seen was by illegal download. Unorthodox, and not entirely endorsed (though the producers have subsequently celebrated piracy), this nevertheless opened the movie to a hitherto inaccessible audience. (It can be 'rented' on Youtube and is free to view on some sites.)
While watching it, another low-budget fantasy flick, 'Mirrormask', often came to mind. It too uses a young girl and her travels in a fantasy realm to counterpoint a harsh reality, but 'Mirrormask' was the brainchild of fantasy heavyweight, Neil Gaiman. 'Ink' has no pedigree, no money, and yet still triumphs through originality, beauty and sheer bravura.
'Ink' is not without its faults. An unknown cast is bound to have some weak links (though the leads, especially little Emma, are very strong). The story, as I've said, depends a little too much on circular reasoning, and the dialogue requires some polish. However, the ambition on display, the desire to tell a complex story with complex characters, ultimately wins out. A masterpiece of low-budget filmmaking, everyone should give 'Ink' a chance.

Nazi Literature in the Americas

Roberto Bolano's fictitious account of Fascist literati in North, Central and South America is diverting in so far as it goes, but nowhere near as funny, vicious or imaginative as I hoped. Effectively a collection of pen-pictures, the most effective chapter is Bolano's first person account of Ramirez Hoffmann, a pilot in the Chilean air force and sociopathic poet. No doubt based on any number of Chile's military murderers in the 70's, Hoffmann is a chilling character, and the chapter affects, but it stands out like a sore thumb compared with the faux objectivity of the other character entries.
"Nazi Literature" was very readable and it may grow on me over time, but the day after finishing it, I'm still a little disappointed.

As If I had Free Will

When confronted in a bookshop by one of those lovely Everyman hardback editions of 'The Short Stories of Ray Bradbury', what would you do? I mean what could I do!
Now I did have a second thought or two - I read one of his later collections ('Quicker than the Eye', I think) and was hearthily disappointed - and it wasn't a complete edition of all his stories (though there are some on the market). However, it did contain a hundred stories. And I do have if not exactly fond then wonderfully unpleasant memories of 'The Jar', which has haunted me since childhood. So I ask again: what would you do? It's damn obvious what I did.

Legion

When Angels (and Omnipotent Beings) go bad: Legion


There is a long honourable history of angels gone bad in literature and film. Obviously in literature we have Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (and even Dick's 'Upon the Dull Earth'), but on a less sublime level we have had "The Prophecy" trilogy (with a great cast too), 'Constantine' and 'Dogma' in cinema. There is even a history of 'God gone bad' in literature, Lester Del Rey's 'For I am a Jealous People' springing quickly to mind (God doesn't come off too well in the film 'Time Bandits' either). 'Legion' (God sends his angels to wipe out humanity) has the distinction of blending the two threads, but that's its only distinction. It makes the question of why God put evil in the world seem positively rational. (It also brings the question of why God put Hollywood in the world into very sharp focus.)
It would be unfair not to note that 'Legion' has some moments of happy surrealism (a demonic granny, a monstrous ice cream man), and a lot of unintentional humour that had the audience I saw it with cackling. However, there's not nearly enough of either to warrant wasting nearly two hours of your mortal life. You know you're in trouble when the Apocalypse is reduced to an assault on several people in a diner by a host of zombies (think 'Prince of Darkness', 'Assault on Precinct 13', in fact a good proportion of John Carpenter's oeuvre). It's that kind of a movie and not even a good attempt at that kind of a movie.
Dennis Quaid hams it up in a Popeye-type way and Paul Bettany takes it all too seriously, but it's not the cast that's the trouble. Ultimately there's just no getting over the preposterous story. I do kind of wonder why Gabriel always seems to get a bad rap, as if he's the next Lucifer just waiting to fall (though if he's going to be bad, at least 'The Prophecy' had Christopher Walken play him, rather than this film's somewhat bland Kevin Durand), but there's not much else to wonder about, I'm afraid. Except how this got made. Or why there's evil in the world.
A dreadful piece of silliness that doesn't bear even a moment's analysis, it stinks to high Heaven.

Solomon Kane

Solomon Kane

Robert E. Howard was the Texan creator of Conan the Barbarian. Never known for subtlety, he was known for some extraordinary flights of fancy and a solid grasp of action fiction. Indeed besides Conan, he created many other muscle-bound heroes, warriors such as Kull or Bran Mak Morn, mostly in the same mould as his most famous creation. Slightly out of that mould though was his 16th Century Puritan avenger, Solomon Kane; religious where Conan was licentious, obsessive where the barbarian was free-wheeling, Kane's darkness is in keeping with his relative obscurity.
Obscure no longer! With "Solomon Kane", Michael J. Bassett has brought Solomon to the big screen and I'm kind of glad he did.
For one this is often a very beautiful movie, with scenes that reminded me of Michael Reeves' horrible masterpiece, "Witchfinder General". Like that movie, corpses hang fornlornly in glorious country landscapes, pure, happy people enjoy the sunlight before being dragged into evil shadows. But this is no realistic 16th Century. Mixed with Reeves' influence are elements of Sam Raimi's "Army of Darkness". Sorcery and witches abound, and this England gradually comes to look like a post-apocalyptic nightmare. In short it evokes the whole tone of Howard's stories perfectly.
However, if the visuals are arresting, the sound is appalling. I can't remember the last time the muddiness of the sound was such that it damaged my enjoyment, but here it's far too noticeable. It's strange because otherwise Bassett seems to have marshalled a reasonable budget to play with. (Having said that, Hollywood should give this man a real budget! He shows promise.) Klaus Badelt gives a serviceable score and the design is eerily appropriate. Reliable character actors like Pete Postletwaite, Alice Krige and the magisterial Max Von Sydow (I bless every day he's alive!) reinforce this impression that some quality is involved. However, the cast is not perfect, not by a long way. James Purefoy may look the part of Kane, but I think he missed a few of his acting classes, specifically the ones to do with anything outside of sneering and looking guilt-ridden. He gets better as the movie goes on, but he never risks being mistaken for an actor of subtlety.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to Howard. After all this is a world where witches, far from being innocent girls punished by a patriarchal society, are instead homicidal hags who burn people's eyes out from the stake. Let's just say Howard's moral view is a little black and white. Hellfire and damnation is perfectly acceptable in this universe, and villains, such as Jason Flemyng's thankfully underused Malachai, are straight out of panto. Only Malachai's Jason-like lieutenant is in any way impressive as a merciless sociopath.
And that black and white duality carries through to the film as a whole. For every stroke of brilliance, Bassett lets himself down with a cliché (witness the converted thug's laughable "It's good!"). The film powers along, but then if it paused at all you might get to asking awkward questions. My advice is don't ask them. It's popcorn sword and sorcery, and yes, you've seen a lot like it before. But it's all of a calibre that raises the overall game of the genre. Special effects are used in the service of the story, as they should be, and the action is bloody, as it should be. Warts and all, I would regard "Solomon Kane" as a far better stab at the awkward genius of Robert E. Howard than John Milius's "Conan the Barbarian" (1982). Leave your brain on a spike by the door and enjoy.

Up

Can you get much higher? - Up

For a long time I rated 'Toy Story' as the original and the best of Pixar's string of animation hits. With 'Wall-E' though I felt they had reached another peak. And now with 'Up', their latest (and first true foray into 3-D), they have really upped what was already a pretty high ante.
On the surface, a whimsical tale of a man who floats his house off to adventure with the aid of helium balloons, 'Up' is as touching a tale as Pixar have ever created.
Sentimental it may be, it nevertheless has enough darkness to counteract the sweetness that made 'Finding Nemo' cloy. Carl, the grumpy old man at the core of the film, has lived a life that is recognisably human. Meeting and marrying his soulmate, Ellie, he shares his wife's dream of travelling to foreign climes and adventure. Sadly the day to day gets in the way. Within the first twenty minutes we experience a low for every high in their long life together - a new home, their failure to have children, shared moments and Ellie's sad demise - better preparing us for our journey with the old man. With its echoes of "It's a Wonderful Life", it runs the risk of suffering by comparison with that earlier classic. It is high praise then to say that it equals that older movie's emotional pull.
There are weaknesses. It is minimal (there are few characters), and the plotline is not as robust as its siblings (the protection of a bird that is not actually in real danger is a major driver). I would have preferred to see Christopher Plummer's bad guy, Charles Muntz, treated with a little more complexity. As it is his mania is not heightened enough, nor his pain explored. However, there is such a sure understanding of the central character, Carl, that the emotional power his rollercoaster adventure simply overwhelms you. And how many other mainstream movies feature a old man as their protagonist? Ed Asner as Carl is every bit as good as you might expect, while Jordan Nagai as the boyscout along for the ride is never irritating, being naively enthusiastic without being overbearing.
This is as close as Pixar have come to animated perfection. For all the talking dogs, coloured balloons and slapstick, this is as grown-up a movie as you'll see. Yes, the animation is beautiful, the 3-D dazzling, the music sumptuous, and the acting superb, but in the end it is the emotional heart of the story that really shines through. It follows Disney's dictum that every laugh should have a tear to the letter. Indeed the glasses are not for the 3-D, they're to hide the tears, and I needed them.

Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing Lasts Forever - Let's make forever never!


Released in 1984, 'Nothing Lasts Forever' is an obscure pastiche of classic Hollywood schmaltz, and in a roundabout way, everything else that happened in the Twentieth Century. It follows Zach Galligan's quest to become an 'artist', a quest which brings him to a New York ruled by a Communist-style Port Authority; an underground society of secret rulers who also happen to be tramps; a consumer-oriented Moon populated by moon girls and... well, other stuff just as weird. All of this would be 'so Indie' were it not for the off-putting presence of stars like Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray and a score by heavyweight composer, Howard Shore ('Lord of the Rings').
I first saw this way back on Moviedrome, a film slot on BBC2 hosted by Alex Cox in the '80s. Somehow it stuck with me and I have kept my eyes open for it ever since. I came across it the other day and had to watch it one more time.
It's still weird. Ostensibly set in the 1930's, and using stock footage beautifully, the film flippantly refers to the '50s, video and other anachronistic bits and pieces that confound this general feel. Though shot in black and white, the film bursts into colour 'Wizard of Oz'-style when Galligan enters the underground kingdom of the tramps or lands on the Moon, and all this evokes fantasy films of the '40s where colour was still a novel way of indicating a change of world (done in a typically idiosyncratic way by Powell and Pressburger in 'A Matter of Life and Death'). The story, which is more a string of episodes than a solid tale, doesn't make an awful lot of sense, but instead follows a dream logic that seems to remind us of early Hollywood too. It's totally bonkers, yet oddly coherent. All in all it reminds me of another film that mixes up its Twentieth Century elements willynilly; 'Brazil'. While being nowhere near the masterpiece that film was, it's just as successful in creating that sense of a Twentieth Century that never was.
A writer from Saturday Night Live, writer/director Tom Schiller somehow gives an authentically 'nostalgic' feel to the whole enterprise. The cast play it beautifully straight too with Gremlin's Zach Galligan in particular being stunningly naive throughout. Again this is no masterpiece, and I half suspect this kind of thing appeals only to very odd souls like me. However, it deserves a DVD reissue at the very least. As the fetching lunar maiden sings, 'Nothing lasts forever, If this must be, Let's make forever never.' Ahem, yes, quite.

Franklyn

Franklyn-stein - good bits sewn together with some dead parts

Kind of an anti-Fisherking, the British movie, 'Franklyn', follows four apparently disconnected stories to a point where they all inevitably intersect. What sets things askew is that one of those stories is set in the fantastical city of Meanwhile, where Ryan Philippe plays a costumed loner at odds with his religion-riddled environment. In the other tales, Eva Green plays a suicide-obsessed artist, Sam Riley tries to recover from being jilted at the altar, and Bernard Hill searches for his missing war veteran son.
This is director Gerald McMorrow's first feature and though competent, his inexperience shows in some distinctly sub-Matrix fight scenes. More crucially, his competence as a screenwriter is also tested and it is in this that the film falls.
The problem is a.) his 'real-world' stories are too slender, too sketchy and too uninvolving, while b.) his 'Meanwhile' strand demands your attention, distracting from the others. Who wants to see Eva Green, all dippy and depressed, indulging in half-hearted suicide attempts, when you can see Philippe (looking like a cross between Watchmen's Rorschach and 'The Nightmare Before Christmas's Jack Skellington) hunting religious fanatics in a grotesque version of London. (Which is not to say fair Eva isn't shaping up to be the next Helena Bonham Carter rather well.) 'Meanwhile', with its backstory of a land dominated by religions, thousands of them (eg. The Seventh Day Manicurists, or a cult devoted to washing machine manuals), is crying out throughout the movie for more screentime. I'm not sure if McMorrow could deliver if he was to make a Meanwhile film (look at the sadly underwhelming 'Mirrormask' for what it might become), but it's a movie I would prefer to 'Franklyn'.
The cast is good. Green certainly does her usual scowling, but occasionally shows signs of some previously unsuspected acting muscles. Sam Riley, apparently excellent in the Ian Curtis biopic, 'Control', (I haven't seen it yet), is just a little too wimpy here, but his romantic tale is hardly a strong foundation for any performance of power. He gets by. The always reliable Bernard Hill bumbles around well too, but ultimately we just don't know enough about him to really care.
One thing I did like was the discrepancy between the subjective experience and the objective reality, something very central to the film's theme. The heroic is very easily flipped into the villainous, and vice versa, simply by changing perspective, instantly adding a dimension to the film that almost lifts it out of the ordinary. However, this aspect of the film is hardly a surprise and I for one had the 'twist' worked out very early on. Which brings us right back to a script that though it believes itself original, is actually patched together from many other (better) films before it. The ending itself ultimately sews things together a little too neatly.
There's a lot going on then, but in the end it boils down to a neatly played thesis on the power of fantasy versus the demands, and magic, of reality itself. Simple though this theme might be, it is a strong one and worth a movie (which is probably why we have 'The Fisherking' already). 'Franklyn' says its piece well, but never well enough to be really memorable. Well, except for Meanwhile....