Murphy Strikes Again

The wee bastard's just trying to wind me up.

As if it's not bad enough that, thanks to our new, pointless security procedures, I have to be up at the crack of frigging dawn to get a mid-morning flight to my sister-in-law's wedding, I've just discovered that the moth I kindly haven't killed whilst it spent the last two days fluttering about my flat has eaten the arm off my suit.

Bastard!

I've only worn the damn thing about four times, too.

That's it. No more Mr Nice Guy. Anything flying gets twatted in future and the next mouse-eating spider I find running across the living-room floor will not be caught under a glass and gently evicted to the outdoors. Oh no! It'll be put in my wardrobe to eat any sumbitch moth that decides to have a go at whatever I have to buy to replace my suit.

REVIEW SEVERANCE

REVIEW: SEVERANCE

This British horror film starts off as a pretty bog-standard slasher/survival-type movie and pretty much stays there.

Yes, the characters are the usual clichéd bunch. Yes, the situation is pretty unimaginative and somewhat poorly explained. Yes, you can see who’s going to survive and who’s going to die within moments of meeting the characters. We all know that the token American will be the hero because that’s the only way an American audience will ever even think of watching any film not made there and starring the same people they’ve seen in the last fifteen moovees they saw. Yes, it’s trying to cash in on the likes of Dog Soldiers and Descent (Not, as other reviews & even its own trailers will tell you, Shaun of the Dead. This is not a spoof.) And, yes, I do realise that this is shaping up to be a negative review.

It’s not, though, and the film’s far from bog-standard.

Because full of clichés though this film is it uses them very effectively, turns quite a few of them on their heads and is a great, fun-filled, thrill-ride. Too many survival films either take themselves too seriously or try to be funny and don’t manage it. This sends itself up as it goes along and does it well from the characters spinning tall tales and recounting urban myths about why all this might be about to happen down to the kind of Babes with Guns-type sequence members of the NRA are so fond of. The performances are excellent, especially Tim McInnery who turns in his usual, but wonderful, chinless-wonder character. The script is fairly tight, though it could be a little quicker to the point and clearer over which urban myth is right. The effort to make all of them at least partly true is quite clever but does add to the confusion a little. Then again, when you’re lost in a forest in Eastern Europe and someone’s killing your friends in gruesome and imaginatively cruel ways the odds are rather long on your having or caring about a complete grasp of their motives and, since they’re not Bond villains, and you don’t speak even a word of their language, anyway, explanations aren’t likely to be forthcoming, either. Put rather more bluntly, though, this kind of film doesn’t need a whole lot of plot just something to hang it on that’s remotely plausible then you get on with the action.

Once it starts it’s relentless. The body-count is pretty high, the deaths are satisfyingly gruesome and there’s no indestructible Jason/Freddy/Michael Myers type villain. The violence is pretty realistic, too. There’s none of moviedom’s usual nonsense about people not feeling pain or fear or making altruistic gestures just because they’re the good guys. With their lives on the line the worst comes out in just about everyone.

Cock-ups to watch out for: the most ineptly hidden blood-bag in history on the first victim. It’s not even needed as it’s opened out of shot. Wondering why a CEO who’s been ‘…dying to demonstrate this.’ BFG doesn’t know what it’s going to do. (It gives one of the best laughs in the film, though, so I’ll forgive them.)

Well worth a viewing with some great scares and some genuinely creepy moments. Highly recommended.

Review A Scanner Darkly

Review: A Scanner Darkly

Keanu Reeves plays an undercover cop in this animated version of a Philip K. Dick tale of a near-future dystopia. As usual with Dick's works this story is heavily coloured by his own substance-abuse and paranoia, but given the subject of this tale it gives him a perspective which, for once, enhances the narrative. That is presuming you can be entertained by an hour and a half of paranoid junkie rambling to get to a not very surprising 'twist'. You won't even get a satisfactory ending as the film just peters out without a conclusion.

Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, neither one unfamiliar with, shall we say, major elements of their characters' makeup, act the pants off everyone else in a show-stealing double act so believable one could believe they got stoned and were left in the Big Brother house. They bring a much-needed lightness and sense of humour to an otherwise rambling, leaden and tedious script. Reeves' preferred underplaying technique by comparison leaves him looking more wooden and dull than ever. Given his manic turn in the Bill & Ted films we know he can be freer, so why he refuses to do so any more is a mystery.

Another mystery is why this is animated. As you doubtlessly know the scenes were all filmed as normal and then the animation was Rotoscoped over it. With the exception of the suits the undercover agents wear to hide their identities there are no special effects so it wasn't to cut the budget. This would have had an inflationary effect and served to delay the film's release by over a year. One is tempted to say that it's an attempt to enhance the feelings of unreality and disassociation, but can't escape the feeling that it's just one big technical jerk-off.

Too much is left unresolved - including the main plot. When Reeves has an apparently drug-induced hallucination that the girl he's sleeping with has transformed into his touch-averse girlfriend (Winona Ryder in her only nude role. Oh, that's why they animated the whole thing!) it makes sense as a guilty reaction. At least it does until his character is watching the surveillance tapes (don't ask) and we see the face morph and he doesn't question it.

Philip K. had a lot of good ideas for stories. Sadly, his writing technique and his own paranoia usually left them poorly developed and even undermined. That's why adaptations of his works are often so heavily re-written. This needed more of that treatment. Worth seeing but should/could have been much better. Far too much concentration on the kind of rambling waffle only the seriously stoned could care about.

Cyclists beware: inflamed bladders ahead - Yahoo! News

Never trust a Computer #009

Cyclists beware: inflamed bladders ahead - Yahoo! News

Councils trying to save money by using free internut services rather than employing a translator. Wonder how much it'll cost to re-make the signs...

Terror Plot

Interesting watching all this stuff about the terrorist plot develop. Especially as John Reid made an announcement about how we'd all have to be prepared to surrender some of our freedoms in order to protect them just the day before.  Classic Orwellian doublespeak if ever I heard it.
One wonders why, given that the plot centred around flights between Heathrow and America, it is that the largest number of restrictions and messed up flights centre on internal flights? Not to mention why, since the police have stated that the planned attacks were not due to take place for some time after they made their arrests, that these restrictions were begun on that day. Or why it was deemed safe for planes to begin to fly out of Heathrow after 3.00pm. Finally, why, since this was a plot based in and heading out from Britain, was it deemed necessary to restrict incoming flights?Actually, I know the answer to the last one. At least, I can guess; the airlines didn't want their planes grounded in the UK.
This business about liquid explosives has long been known. Christopher Brookmyre's novel "A Big Boy Did it & Ran Away" -released just before 9/11- opened with a terrorist doing exactly what was described by the police yesterday. Except Chris wasn't dumb enough to actually list the chemicals - unlike the tabloids here today. So why, given that this technique was known to be in the terrorists’ arsenal, do we suddenly have these restrictions now? And what's to stop them putting them into a suitable container and carrying them the same way drug mules do?

I'm flying south for a wedding in 2 weeks and I'm doing the video & some of the photography at it so I need to carry cameras. I've seen the way baggage handlers treat luggage. Now they've had their workload tripled do you really think anything fragile will be making it to the other end intact? And with the new check-in times my 40 minute flight is now going to take up to 6 hours - longer than by coach. Oh, and I just can't wait to stand in a loooong queue in a sweaty security hall with a load of people with their shoes off waiting to put them through the x-ray machine.Look, I know they need to be vigilant and they have to try to counter these plots, but this smacks more of being seen to do something than actually controlling events. What's next? Internal exams for all 'plane passengers? The terrorists are achieving their aims without even having to detonate a device. Our own governments are doing the job of restricting our freedoms and disrupting our lives for them. I just hope that they’ve got it right this time. If their intelligence has screwed up again I hate to think what the consequences might be. They can evade shooting some poor slob for having a beard and a suntan but disrupting this much business? They’d better have real evidence this time and not just ‘credible intelligence’.
Oh, and instead of being on the street actually dealing with crime, you might be interested to hear that Strathclyde Police - my local force, who have in the past refused to send officers to investigate gangs with axes in the park or reports of burglaries in progress - will be hand-delivering letters to local Muslims to 'reassure' them that none of this is personal. Priorities...

Breast isn't best: readers tell US parenting magazine - Yahoo! News UK

Breast isn't best: readers tell US parenting magazine - Yahoo! News UK

This reminds me of directing a play called Spitting Image some years ago. It was written just after the legalisation of homosexuality in the 60s and concerned a gay couple, one of which falls pregnant. Demi Moore just having done her Vanity Fair cover I decided to pastiche it for our promotional posters and had a photo of one of the leads re-touched to make him appear pregnant. The outrage caused by this astounded me. Many places refused to display it and of those which did many were deluged with demands to remove it.

All the complaints were from women, so I think in that case it was about somehow feeling threatened by it, as if we were somehow infringing on a personal and strictly feminine area. Indeed, the few who bothered to articulate their hatred of the poster mentioned just such feelings amidst words like 'disgusting', 'obscene' and 'filth'.

So I understand the antipathy so many women feel towards the sight or images of breast-feeding even less. Especially in connection to this cover, which is a natural, beautiful and entirely non-sexual image. My own wife feels uncomfortable if another woman breast-feeds near her and she can't explain why.

I believe that in the West we've so ingrained the image of breast as sexual rather than nurturing object that it now subconciously triggers unnatural associations when we see one being used for its 'designed' purpose. Put a bit more bluntly, we see breast-feeding as a sexual act and the existence of strands of pornography dedicated to lactating tends to back this theory up. So when we see images of breast-feeding or -heaven forfend!- an actual act of public breast-feeding we are made uncomfortable by our own subconcious associations and guilt.

When I say we, though, I don't include myself in this. I see it as a natural, nurturing and beautiful thing. It should never be hidden or made shameful by the kind of 'puritans' mentioned in this article. That kind of mindset is anything but 'pure'. It's the kind of person whose sexual map is so screwed up by guilt and shame that they can turn even the most innoccuous phrase into a double entendre and will turn their protests against it into a misguided crusade to protect children. Few ever ask why children would get some of the more obscure double-entendres the likes of Irn-Bru campaigns have used, for example. Think about it, why do their children understand these jokes? Why would children be 'confused' or 'upset' by a traditional pantomime dame as the politically correct lobby would have us believe they are?

The answer is, as it is with the breast-feeding issue, that they wouldn't. It is the adult's skewed perception that sees these threats where they don't exist. Indeed, it's that very oerception that twists sex itself into something disgusting, unnatural and shameful.

Review Miami Vice

Review: Miami Vice

The original TV series of this show never did much for me. I always considered it to be style over substance. There were lots of 'beauty' shots, an excess of beautiful people and all the locations would have looked ideal in a tourist board brochure.

If I'm really honest I'd have to say that I never really watched enough of it to get a real handle on the characters or the writing. Which is good because it means I'm not comparing this to something of which I harbour fond memories.

At the opening it seems as if the tourist board are going to get some more free advertising. The film opens with the team on a stakeout at a nightclub. The beautiful people arrive in a succession of flash cars (in one case in a matching fleet, no less) and walk past the ordinary punters queuing outside. All of which serves to highlight the veneer of glamour on the seedy side of this beautiful city. We soon learn that the VIPs we've seen arrive are a crime-boss and his entourage, including the girls he's using to sweeten the deal.

We're also introduced to this film's most irritating feature. Whilst I'm sure the dialogue is highly accurate and authentic (actually, I'm not sure at all but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt) it is often entirely incomprehensible. Technobabble and jargon in dialogue are often cited criticisms levelled at SF films by folk who can't use their imaginations. At least they generally have the excuse of talking about things which don't exist. Here the dialogue is just so obscure and often mumbled so quietly that one is left feeling alienated and divorced from what is going on. Jamie Foxx is particularly guilty of a frequent failure to enunciate or energise his voice enough to be comprehensible. All too often you will be left with no clue at all as to what the hell they're on about.

This opening scene is something of a case in point, who they're watching, why and what their plan is are all left irritatingly obscure. Yet, somehow, it doesn't really matter. Just like the technobabble in SF the details of the organisation of deals and the jargon involved can be allowed to flow past. The characters know what they're talking about, so the rest of us can assume that they are competent at what they do and can move with ease in the world they are trying to penetrate.

The performances are exceptionally strong throughout, with a surprising number of Brits filling roles I'd normally expect to see go to the usual company of American character actors. Gong Li gives a wonderful performance showing more range and depth than anyone else in the cast. Her accent is heavy and at times difficult to follow, but she's still clearer than Foxx who's using his native language.

The film is shot with high grain in the film stock, either making a virtue of using film rather than digital stock or trying for a degree of documentary feel. During the last battle we are even 'treated' to the sight of rain drops on the lens. Actually, stuff like that makes it harder to stay involved in the story as one is instantly reminded that one is watching a film. So a wee note to directors here; if you're not making a documentary don’t use documentary techniques. It doesn’t add to the realism of your piece of fantasy and it can be a big distraction.

What does help the suspension of disbelief is that we get to see the underside of Miami. The bits which aren’t so pretty and touristy. We also see a lot of Havana and Cuba giving a much clearer idea of how close they all are and just how hard it must be to keep drugs from crossing America’s borders. Unlike the tv series the colour palette is very subdued, the weather is often poor and the fashions are not embarrassing. The vehicle porn count is still very high, everyone’s still pretty and the cops all live in luxurious houses. Given how little we are lead to believe they are paid these days one has to assume that this is for effect rather than an further attempt to stretch the cinema verite motif.

The story is nothing special. There’s nothing new here and much that can be spotted a mile off and is well into cliché territory. It would be nice if, even for one moment, we could believe that Crockett is going to go over the edge and side with his new girlfriend but we can’t. None of these cops could be suspected of being tempted by the huge wealth they see in front of them every day. The success and fantastic writing on shows like The Shield indicate that this would be fertile ground and leave much scope for innovative plot twists and America certainly has the writers to produce such a rich and imaginative script. So here’s another hint for Hollywood directors: You’re a director; you don’t think an amateur could do your job, so hire someone who can write to produce your script. All you’re going to come up with is hackneyed clichés. I’ve heard tales from writers who have worked with directors whose egos insist that they can improve what writers do. Sometimes they might even manage it. Probably they won’t.

In short, this is not an exceptional film, but it is very far from being bad. Worth watching, but of dubious return value.