Tag: review

State of Play: this time in movie form…

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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.  Read more...

: Arts,Media
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Of DIY and Frost/Nixon

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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.  Read more...

: Arts,Musings
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In which my inner fanboy goes awry

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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.

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: Arts
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The Dark Knight

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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.”  Read more...

: Arts
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