Hannah Swithinbank

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.

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.