Hannah Swithinbank

Fantastic Mr Fox

The new trailer is out for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox movie.  Oh wows. I want to see it so much.  It looks all twonky and lo-fi and wonderous.  And that game is so going to catch on.

State of Play: this time in movie form…

Ok, I take it back. That trailer which I really didn’t like was clearly the result of the powers that be thinking that people would only go and see a political thriller if it had guns and actionythrills, and is not actually a reflection of the film at all. The film being, actually, genuinely really good.

It’s a bit like ‘variations on a theme of state of play’ – I think that’s the best way to explain it. You have this original story that’s really frakking great, and it’s made into an awesome TV series. But what’s being re-made isn’t the TV series, per se, but the story, which is still a frakking great story. I mean, you’d go see several productions of, say, Twelfth Night over the course of your life, if you liked Shakespeare, because they’re all different but equally valid. If it’s a bad production you’re pissed off and regret it, but if it’s good you enjoy it and you get something out of it. State of Play: Teh Film is like a good new production, which takes a slightly different slant on the original story than the TV series did.

The basic plot is the same, although I did for most of the film think they were going to leave out the grand finale – so kudos on them for not bottling it – but details are different, which knocks on into the film feeling different from the series, and yet recognisable. So, f’r'instance, the inquiry Collins is involved in is about defence contracts, not environmentalism and big oil – times have changed, and the film chooses to take a new element in the ‘world going to hell in a handbasket’ theme. It works. Also, the casting makes the dynamics different. Russell Crowe is older and less boyish than John Simm as Cal, but also than Ben Affleck, as Stephen Collins. So the relationship between Cal and Collins is different. There’s less sense of Collins as having been a mentor to Cal, but more the other way around, and so the sense of betrayal at the end is different. There’s also a different Cal-Della dynamic, less equal, more tense, but with Della learning from Cal – it works, and it also lets the film ask questions about the ethics of journalism, whilst simultaneously slimming down the role of the editor from the TV series in order to get the running time down to film-lengths.

So, all in all, State of Play the film is a different beast to the TV series, yet recognisably the same, and it’s equally good, but in a different medium. And I like that I’m going to get to have both. An incidentally, it’s probably Ben Affleck’s best ever part.

Of DIY and Frost/Nixon

Odd evening, yesterday. I’d decided earlier in the week that I’d go see Frost/Nixon, which I’d been wanting to see since, oh pretty much since it first went on stage in London. It was my last chance to see it too, as it clearly wasn’t going to stay in the cinema here for another week. Then, about half an hour before I had to go out, I decided I was so annoyed with my stupid PC and it’s stupid wireless card refusing to get along with the new BT home hub and wireless that I would rearrange the living room to fix it.

Let me explain. The phone socket, into which teh internets must of course be plugged, is on one side of the living room. The alcove, which is the sensible place for the computer desk, is on the other side of the room. Getting wires from one side to the other involves stringing them around the kitchen doorway in a tricksy manner. So to be able to use a network cable to get the computer onto the internet, I had to move the computer. Incidentally, I knew it was the computer’s problem because my laptop is adoring of the new home hub and will do anything I ask it to do with it, short of actually getting snuggly with it.

In order to move the computer, I had to rearrange the living room. The sofa swapped places with the armchair. The computer desk went to live by the bookshelf on the other side of the room, next to the phone socket. And then I remembered that the nice PC box which I inherited from my father is so freaking huge that it won’t fit in the spot it’s supposed to in the desk. So I had to unscrew bits of the desk and remove a shelf. Then I had to take the handsaw and take off half of the plank along the back of the desk so that the box wouldn’t overbalance the desk. And then I had to plug everything back in again and make it work, and I swear there just aren’t enough USB sockets in the world to make this computer happy. Anyway. It works. And the thing’s online again.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this I did actually make it to Frost/Nixon, which, it turned out, was worth the wait. I wasn’t alive back then, and so I have no idea of what it was like, and I don’t remember seeing much actual footage of Nixon, ever. I do remember seeing bits of Breakfast with Frost, and finding Frost annoying, but that’s about it. So first off, it’s really weird hearing David Frost’s voice coming out of Michael Sheen’s mouth. Even odder than hearing Tony Blair’s voice come out of it. He really is astonishingly good as Frost. I had never realised how completely out of his depth Frost was, or how completely unlikely it was that he would get that confession out of Nixon. It just seemed to me like it was this inevitable thing. So what I really liked about the film was the way in which it made it clear that it never was this inevitable thing, and, frankly, just how close Frost came to completely failing to get it at all. I am aware that the phone call that is in the film is ahistorical, but at the same time, it works as an explanation for something changing in Frost’s approach that worked, madly, at just the right moment. It made, in a way, for the most un-movie-like movie, because although it did create a hinge moment that triggers the finale, there isn’t, really any of the usual build up to that moment. It just comes, out of the blue, so there isn’t any of the normal sense of inevitably – which is good, given that 99% of people who watch the film will know the ending, and it makes you realise that it really really wasn’t.

In which my inner fanboy goes awry

Oh Watchmen Watchmen Watchmen.

So here’s the thing, I get why the Watchmen fanboys have gone to town on their love for it. And I get why the snotty-nosed (and also, few less snotty-nosed) don’t. It is both a brilliant film adaptation of the comic, and a fairly rubbish film. Simultaneously.

It’s just too damn faithful, which is the reason for its success and its downfall. They clearly haven’t massacred the source material, so yay, BUT, it also doesn’t add anything to it, and if it doesn’t do that, what is the point of filming it at all? It tries to bring in everyone’s backstories, and everyone’s arcs, and get everyone from character point (a) to character point (b), and completely fails to focus the viewers attention on any particular elements. And the film just can’t cope, it’s collapses under the weight of the material of the book – a book just can do so much more than a film in that regard. The film really needed to decide whether it wanted to focus on either Rorshach *or* Nite Owl/Silk Spectre, and do more with Ozymandias before the end, and follow that through in a way that would do at least for them what the novel does for them all – which is to show the problems inherent in “superheroes”.

So although it’s a very faithful film, it just doesn’t really work as a film. You might as well read the comic whilst listening to the soundtrack.

Books and Films of 2009

The annual attempt to keep track of at least part of my life…

Books:

1. Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace
2. The New Kings of Non-Fiction – Ira Glass
3. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
4. Watchman – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
5. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – Alan Moore
6. A Constitution of Many Minds – Cass Sunstein
7. America: Empire of Liberty – David Reynolds
8. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail – Hunter S. Thompson
9. America: Empire of Liberty – David Reynolds
10. The Men Who Stare At Goats – Jon Ronson
11. Starbook – Ben Okri
12. Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life – Bryan Lee O’Malley
13. Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes – Neil Gaiman
14. Lost in a Good Book – Jasper Fforde
15. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – Bryan Lee O’Malley
16. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8: The Time of Your Life – Joss Whedon & Jeph Loeb
17. Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness – Bryan Lee O’Malley
18. Matter – Iain M. Banks
19. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
20. Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together – Bryan Lee O’Malley
21. Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe – Bryan Lee O’Malley
22. The Wine Dark Sea – Patrick O’Brian
23. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace
24. Ghost – Robert Harris
25. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
26. The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood
27. Turbulence – Giles Foden
28. Much Obliged, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
29. Men and Cartoons – Jonathan Lethem
30. Better than Sex – Hunter S. Thompson
31. This is Water – David Foster Wallace
32. The City and the City – China Mieville
33. Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader – Neil Gaiman
34. A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil – Christopher Brookmyre
35. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
36. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
37. Lustrum – Robert Harris
38. And Another Thing – Eoin Colfer
39. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace
40. The Boys on the Bus – Timothy Crouse
41. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, volume 5: Predators and Prey – Joss Whedon et al.
42. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
43. The Gone-Away World – Nick Harkaway
44. Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that changed a Nation
45. Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris

Films

1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
3. Milk
4. Watchmen
5. The Young Victoria
6. Frost/Nixon
7. State of Play
8. In the Loop
9. Let the Right One In
10. Wolverine
11. Star Trek
12. Coraline
13. Public Enemies
14. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
15. The Proposal
16. The Time-Traveller’s Wife
17. Inglourious Basterds
18. Funny People
19. District 9
20. Up
21. Taking Woodstock
22. Away We Go
23. The Informant
24. Twilight: New Moon
25. Fantastic Mr Fox
26. Where the Wild Things Are

The 2008 list

Coraline

It’s been a wee while since I read Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, but I do remember really enjoying it. Gaiman is a greater storyteller than he is a writer, I think, so it makes sense that his kids stories and fairytales are better than his adult novels. I far prefer Stardust to American Gods, for instance.

Anyway, the trailer for Henry Selick’s film version is now online. As I can’t bring to mind too much of the plot of the novel, I can’t really comment on that aspect of it, but I really do like the look and tone of it. Stop motion is beauteous.

catholicism makes you miserable. no really.

I went to see the tnew film of Brideshead Revisited last night. Brideshead Re-edited.

First off, I’ll admit that it was not at all the trainwreck I was expecting. Nor was it wholly and unentirely unlike the book – except that the Catholicism Screws You Up Theme was much much stronger in a way that Evelyn Waugh might not have liked. And of course the inevitable plot changes – Julia in Venice, WTF?

It was, however, Brideshead Revisited at Warp Speed as whole years went flying out of the window and everything crashed about at the same time in the plot. Bridey and Cordelia nearly ended up flying out of the window after them. Surely the fact that Cordelia is by-and-large content should be important, especially in contrast to her siblings? And whilst Ed Stoppard is a thoroughly repulsive Bridey, he is thoroughly repulsive, where beloved Simon “Arthur Dent” Jones in the TV series was perfectly disconnected, which is how I think Bridey should be. Cousin Jasper wouldn’t say of FilmBridey: “Brideshead went down last year, a very sound fellow…” FilmBridey is not sound to any point of view.

The film is held together by Matthew Goode, who really is a very good Charles. He doesn’t quite match up to Jeremy Irons, but he doesn’t get the material (or the voice over) to do it with. He’s also, perhaps, a little too likeable (or maybe that’s just me nurturing a little crush) – he’s not quite as ill-at-ease in Brideshead as Irons’ Ryder. His outsider-ness is made clear in the fact that he comes from Paddington, and is continually stated, rather than shown. Ben Wishaw is a fairly annoying Sebastian. I didn’t really care at all when he fell apart – which happened FAR too quickly. I think the genius of Anthony Andrews’ performance is that everybody fell in love with him alongside Charles. Perhaps part of the problem is the speed of the film – the first year at Oxford blinks in a click of the fingers, and the languid days at Brideshead exist only in montage – so there is no time to get to care about Sebastian. But it is a problem nonetheless. Poor Julia is also hard done by – her marriage to Rex slams in out of nowhere, with no understanding of wherefores and whys until later – whereas Charles always understood why, and wasn’t personally injured at the time. In this Julia is running away from Charles as much as her family. Emma Thompson is a glorious Catholic Matriarch though. She’s tougher than Claire Bloom was, but it’s just a slightly different take on the character – both are valid, and indeed, the speed this film works at requires that Lady Marchmain be much more forcefully insidious. She and Goode are probably worth going to see the film for – or for waiting for it on DVD.

It wasn’t a bad film. Neither was it a particularly good film, and it certainly was not as good a version of the novel as the TV series. In fact, if there were no novel, it still wouldn’t be a good remake of the TV series. And it really is impossible not to compare the two, especially if you know the TV series well. But I think the book requires a longer telling, where there is dialogue that isn’t simply there to advance the plot, and perhaps a quieter one. The story is a slow burning move towards misery and emptiness – the film features a crashing downfall.

When is a list not a list?

When it’s so long that the comparative order of the list becomes utterly meaningless?

Empire film magazine have run a poll to find the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time – as voted for by its readership (and as they ran the poll online too, this has the potential to be a very broad readership). Now, I like Empire; it’s one of the two magazines I subscribe to, and I like that it likes and understands genre, unlike a large number of newspaper critics (at least the newspapers I read, by which I mean broadsheet). They’re very good at assessing films on their own terms as well as on critical terms, so they can tell you whether something is a very good schlocky actioneer if you’re in the mood for schlocky actioneers. Of course this means that both the likes of There Will Be Blood, and Pearl Harbour both got five star reviews. It’s a problem inherent in all reviewing – I like to know if a new Coen brothers film is less brilliant than some of their classic films, and I can figure out for myself that I’m going to like slightly sub-vintage Coen more than, say, Transformers.

Now, however, this problem has translated to an epic poll. 500 films is simply too many for a sensible list to be made. Pretty much anything any reader and viewer can remember can make it onto the list – there almost ceases to be any distinction of what ‘really good’ is. I may be a film snob, but I would like to maintain that there are good films and bad films (and really really bad films). This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the bad films – I own a copy of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead after all. But you can still know that you are enjoying them in their badness.
There’s an invisible standard which declares Mean Streets (#377) to be better than Four Weddings and A Funeral (#375) or 300 (#337) – even though you could have an interesting debate between Mean Streets and the Seventh Seal (#335) – where ‘better’ and ‘enjoyment’ mingle. Full Metal Jacket (#457) is better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (#453) and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (#449), and although you may want to toss a coin as to whether you prefer The Deer Hunter (#467) to Juno (#463), the former has stood the test of time and deserves to be ranked more highly than the latter.

So this is what I want, if publicly chosen film polls we are having. A list of no more than 100 films, none of which may have been released in the last 12-18 months. It’s called longevity, folks. It’s good.

And on a personal level, can I just say that Titanic is not and never will be better than Grosse Point Blank. The End.

The Dark Knight

Beware, for there may be a few spoilers, but I’ll try not to give anything big away. Believe me when I say it’s better going in as unspoilt as possible.

O.M.G.
There have to be pauses. Yeeeeeeeeesh. It was, not what I was expecting, and yet better than I was expecting, a delight, and a dark dark dark film. Seriously, comic book movie, natch. Dark crime drama about what drives men to do stuff that would, if it didn’t feature a man in a cape, be seriously considered for awards for the sort of things its thinking about, yuh-huh.

And, ohhhhhh, the Joker. I’ve heard some reviewers talking about Ledger disappearing into the role, and he does. And yet, it is indisputably him. You will know when it’s him when he’s on screen, but it’s not him him. And he is phenomenal. And yet – I can see no reason to doubt other members of the cast when they say he could turn it off and on. It’s not an obsessive performance, its FUN. There’s one scene, and if you don’t want spoilers look away now – it has the Joker in a nurse’s uniforma and chestnut wig, and its absolutely hilarious, but also absolutely terrifying because of what the Joker is doing. But you can’t help but enjoy him in the part, and know he was enjoying playing it. And it was that point, when he come out of a building, and he’s in the uniform, and the make-up, and he does a little skip and the shambling Joker-walk, and my heart just broke a little, because, now this is gone, there’s only a little bit of Dr Parnassus left, and there’ll be no other new moment where I get to go, “Oh my life, I love Heath Ledger.”

Sit through the first bit of the credits, btw, for the dedication. Just because.

Over here in the UK the film is a 12A, which means kids under 12 can see if with their parents. Don’t do it. Seriously. I have no idea how it wasn’t a 15. There were moments I was watching through my fingers because I was expecting something truly nasty to happen. I bought every single moment of that movie (despite what I know about the comic book series), and it was phenomenal.
Also, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent – truly amazing, you could see all the possible potentials going all the way through, it just worked. And of course, Gary Oldman – heart. I could watch him be Jim Gordon for ever. And then some. There’s a lovely moment that is Wayne and Gordon, and I’d completely forgotten that Gordon doesn’t know. And I sniffled a little for Bruce Wayne at that point, because *he* doesn’t get to know Jim Gordon.

The film triangles around Batman, Dent and Gordon, and Gordon is the heart of that trio, who’s just going to keep on keeping on. And that makes the film, really. Between all the crime and schemes, the capes and the clown make up and scars, you have Gordon, and you also have Lucius Fox and Alfred keeping Bruce Wayne human, and it gives the film the grounding it needs – far more than the Rachel Dawes love interest story does.

It’s just phenomenal, and really really well constructed, all the pieces of the jigsaw fit together wonderfully. The action is better than in Batman Begins too – lots of brief sequences, that slot together, and no loooong car chase that I would want to skim over in rewatching. It’s awesome. Go see.