Your Woolamaloo Gazette holiday movie guide

Looking for some movies to watch over the Easter break? Here's the Woolamaloo Gazette handy guide to some recent releases:

Mick-Ass: the tale of one Irish superhero and his forbidden love for his donkey


Butter Island: Intense psycho-drama as Leonardo DiCaprio suffers an allergic reaction to dairy products and takes a dark trip through his deepest fears

Splash of the Fountains: Anita Ekberg digitally reanimated and fighting monsters from Greek mythology in the Trevi Fountain. All now in 3D, including Anita's enormous knockers coming right out the screen at you.

How to Drain Your Flaggon: a delightful 3D CG animated romp of a young lad's first foray into drinking mead in his viking village.

Alice in Underwear in 3D: a now grown up Alice escapes a planned loveless marriage by travelling back to Underwearland and becoming a lingerie model.

Treen Zone: Matt Damon joins classic British hero Dan Dare to fight off an invasion by the evil Mekon of Mekonta's Treen army during the second Gulf War.

Academy Award Winning picture

This trailer sends up so many 'worthy' Oscar hungry Hollywood type movies in a few minutes, it's genius (via Stephen Fry's twitter):

Magical Movie Moment: Cyrano de Bergerac

I thought I might start occassionally blogging on a series of 'triple Ms', or what I refer to as Magical Movie Moments. Its those scenes that stand out from a movie - sometimes a fabulous movie, sometimes just a wonderful scene in an otherwise average flick - that just encapsulate for me the real magic of cinema. They are those scenes that transcend narrative, genre or any of the qualities we would normally discuss about a film, they simply are and they are wonderful; they make you forget everything else for a few precious moments by their utter perfection, they enchant you and for those moments you are lost, a child again lost in another world. Long after the film ends and the houselights come back up that special scene, where the story, the imagery, the music all combined to a few moments of magical perfection, will stay in your mind.


For the first MMM I had to select a scene from my all time favourite film, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's astonishing Cyrano de Bergerac. Colossus of modern French cinema Gerard Depardieu is perfectly cast as the titular Cyrano; the finest swordsman in the realm, an inventive wit, writer, poet, philospopher, yet cursed with is enormous nose he feels women judge him not by his prodigious merits but his physical looks and so brave on the battlefield or the duel, he retreats from announcing his love for the beautiful Roxanne (Anne Brochet, never more beautifully luminous as here).


The entire film is simply perfect - the costumes and sets are wonderfully evocative of the period, the characters perfectly played by a superb cast, the doomed tale of love, swords and poetry delivers a heady mixture of swooning romance and flashing blades of pure swashbuckling grandeur, all given with the flair of poetry; even the subtitles, the English ones by Anthony Burgess, are a work or art, often translated into verse, suiting Cyrano's larger than life character perfectly.


Its hard for me to pick just one scene when I love the film so much (I rewatch it at least once a year) - the balcony scene as Cyrano in the shadows feeds line to the handsome but none too clever Baron to relate to Roxanne (who is drawn to his beauty but his words even more so, unaware they are Cyrano's), the scene where she tells Cyrano she loves someone, he thinks she means her but then learns otherwise; she leaves all breathless, commenting on his recent duel with a whole crowd of assassins "what bravery", "oh," he replies to her departing back, "I have been braver since..." and that wonderful scene where, convinced she does love him, he takes on a hundred men who are sent to kill his brother poet, "take away the midgets, bring on the giants!", the 'schink' of a hundred swords beign drawn then Cyrano leaping from one to the other, dispatching all the villains with his sword as the music swells... Fabulous.


But I can pick only one scene and I've opted for the famous duel in verse. It happens quite early in the film, as Cyrano is in the theatre after dispatching a fat actor from the stage for insutling his cousin a foppish aristocrat approaches him and insults his prodigious nose. Cyrano then follows him, teasing him and humiliating him in front of the crowd for not being intelligent and well read enought to craft a more inventive insult, himself tossing off dozens of poetic variations on possible insults he could have used, clearly showing that the Viscount may have rank and title but Cyrano is how own man, intelligent and brave and so beholden to none simply because they have the lace and clothes of rank (reminiscent of Rabbie Burns A Man's a Man for a' that). Then the swords are drawn and Cyrano announces to the crowd of Parisian onlookers he will compose a poem of the duel while he actually fights the foolish aristocrat. Flashing blades, swashbuckling swords cross as poetry flies, a wonderous marriage of verse and action that enchants me every time. I love film, I love poetry, I spent many years at school and college enjoying fencing, how could I not love this scene?

Winsor McCay, silent animation

Via Tom at Comics Reporter comes a link to this charming footage of early 20th century pioneer of comics and animation, Winsor McCay; for those not familiar with him, Winsor created the first movie dinosaur, Gertie, back in 1914 - it was imbued with proper character (no doubt thanks to his cartoonist training and skills) which gave it some personality akin to the proper animated cartoons which would follow in the subsequent years. As well as pioneering animation in the dawn days of the then new film medium McCay was a popular comics creator for the newspapers, with his Little Nemo in Slumberland full of beautiful, dreamlike imagery that has remained influential for over a century, cited by creators like Moebius and Gaiman. Its a lovely piece of early cinematic magic.

Alice in Wonderland trailer

There's a very brief - but good quality - trailer for Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland now on YouTube. Sadly you'll have to follow the link as embedding has been disabled for it, which always annoys the hell out of me - if you are going to share a video publicly via YouTube then you obviously want people to see it; you do that best in the virtual world of the web by encouraging others to share it, the digital version of word of mouth and being able to embed makes sense for multimeda like trailers, blocking the function while still having it up publicly shows a PR firm who haven't quite grasped the digital world and how to use it to share and include their client's works with their audience. Still, the video looks amazing, as you might expect, Burton and Lewis Carroll being rather obvious bedfellows to my mind, although it may be slightly over-egged in the pudding department.

Animation at the Film Fest

Among the movies I was eager to see during my annual week off at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival were two animated features which we’ve mentioned on here before (regular readers will know of my fascination for all forms of animation) - the Australian stop-motion film Mary and Max (that rare thing, a feature length, independent animated movie aimed at an older audience) and a more traditionally animated 2D offering from Ireland’s Cartoon Salon, The Secret of Kells, which was created primarily for a younger audience.

The Secret of Kells

(an illuminated text version of Aisling and Brendan)

Regular readers will probably remember me mentioning this rather beautiful Irish animation a few times before on the blog - artist Cliodhna Lyons (Irish 24 hour comics day) first put me on to it last year as she had been involved with the Cartoon Salon in Kilkenny and the descriptions and artwork I saw had me hooked. It is an Irish-French-Belgian production and this and the graphic novel based on the film meant Kells also had a presence at this year’s prestigious Angouleme Festival, which Wim covered back in January. Drawing (no pun intended) inspiration from the fabled Book of Kells, one of the incomparably beautiful books in the history of world literature, The Secret of Kells offers up the tale of a young monk, Brendan, a novice at the monastery of Kells where his uncle is the stern, towering, grim-face abbot.

It is an evil time for many - Rome is but a distant memory and the Dark Ages have fallen across much of Europe. One of the lights in the long, dark night comes from the early church and most especially in the monastery’s preservation and dissemination of learning and the dim, early days before nations like Ireland and Scotland were actually nations, but were slowly being forged in a cauldron of oral myth, the unique Celtic brand of Christianity, small kingdoms becoming larger kingdoms and the testing by fire of brutal events like the seemingly endless invasions of the Norsemen - the Vikings. Off the Western coast of Scotland, among the many islands which scatter there though the seas lies the spiritual home of early Scottish Christianity and it is from here that Brother Aidan must flee as the Viking raiders sack this sacred site and slaughter or enslave the holy men who live there, destroying or ransacking everything within. Aidan flees with a remarkable book, the Book of Iona, still to be completed after many long decades of patient illumination by many gifted, scholarly monks. Bringing it to Kells he hopes to complete it with the help of brothers in the scriptorium there, but the abbot has lost patience with such things, being totally obsessed with building walls and defences against the inevitable Norse assault he knows will come on Kells and the monks and many villagers who have fled there for protection. He actively discourages his young nephew from helping Aidan, who, now finding his old hands to unsteady for the job, seeks a gifted replacement to finish the book.

Disobeying his uncle Brendan steals into the forest, a dark place, home to strange creatures from Irish folklore, dark wolves, standing stones, strange caves, home to mythical beings. And a forest sprite in the form of a young girl (Aisling), who is suspicious at first but soon warms to Brendan until the two become close friends.

The film is beautifully animated - the artwork is often simply gorgeous, as befits a work inspired by one of the most beautiful cultural treasures in the world. Sometimes the characters appear to be walking in an odd way compared to the background and it felt to me that this was a deliberate style adopted by the animators; its as if the characters are flat and walking across a flat background, which seems appropriate to the art style of the period, long before the more normal (to us) adoption of perspective in Renaissance art much later. Some scenes are also broken into split screens, little triptychs which recall the lovely, large header illustrations common in many illuminated books of the period, while other scenes again draw directly for their design on the unique form of illuminated texts which the Celtic school of Christianity created, people, animals, beautiful plants, flowing script and twisting, interwoven lines and knots combining into something so beautiful it almost makes you cry (so beautiful its mere sight is supposed to blind sinners as Brendan says), while other touches are small and subtle, such as the way the dappled light sparkles in the forest as the sun comes through the leaves.

Contrasted against this the Norsemen are depicted mostly in shadows, dark black and blood red outlines of hulking figures, swords and horns, recalling the demon from Fantasia (for which the great Bela Lugosi posed for the Disney animators, long before motion capture). Their acts, while never shown in detail, are brutal, dark, terrifying - for a film aimed primarily at younger viewers possibly a bit scary, but then they should be and I think its good that the animators don’t hide the horrible brutality of the period, especially as it makes the book stand out all the more. Too late the abbot will realise that his endless obsession with defences will still not halt the tide of Viking onslaught and that while they are all transient beings the book is more important then any of them or the abbey itself; the book is a symbol of the light, a beacon to shine a path out of the Dark Ages and to touch the souls of men and women for eternity (as it still does to this day). But only if Brendan and Aidan, with help from Aisling and a rather smart cat can save this remarkable work of art.

(the demonic Norsemen attack)

Its an utterly beautiful film - there’s a lovely adventure and a tale of friendship, of learned responsibilities, of what is most important, of coming of age, of saving what you can against the ages, served with a helping of folklore and fantasy, some humour and some wonderful moments of wonder that will have the eyes of child audiences open wide and the eyes of the adults too, all served up with some beautiful, traditional animation, which moves from the reasonably simple to the gorgeously elaborate scenes directly inspired by the Book of Kells. And as a bonus hopefully it will inspire kids to learn more about our history and our shared culture. Sadly there is still no news on a general UK release as yet, so at the moment you will need to watch out for it at film festivals. Which is a huge hint to any film distributors out there - this is beautiful, enchanting adventure with soul and culture and it needs to be seen by more people (and parents its a perfect one to take your kids to). And its not just animation lovers like me - Secret of Kells took the much vaunted Standard Life Audience Choice Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival - that’s an award cast by actual audience members as they leave the cinema, not an award given by critics, so obviously the audiences here loved it too; you can find out more on the official movie site here and director Tomm Moore's blog.

(director Tomm Moore - pictured centre - at the UK premiere during the Edinburgh Film Festival, from my Flickr stream)

Mary and Max

Also at the Film Festival I was lucky enough to catch another animated film I have been eager to see for months, Mary and Max. The first Australian film every picked to open the prestigious Sundance Festival and also the first animated film to do so (which is a strong indicator of how good it is, as is its award at Annecy), its one of those movies which has been gathering impressive word of mouth on the international festival circuit, although like all indy films that is only half the struggle - getting general releases in various countries is another matter and good showings at film festivals is part of that hard slog of getting the film seen by a wider audience (a task made harder by the fact its an animated movie made for adults - most film companies won‘t know how to market such a thing). And does Mary and Max deserve to be seen by that wider audience? Oh yes, without a doubt yes.

(Max Jerry Horowitz from Mary and Max)

This lovely, stop-motion tale is essentially a story of two damaged, lonely souls who find a remarkable connection across the world. Young Mary is a little girl in suburban Australia, with no friends at school, a funny looking face that gets made fun of, a father who spends most of his time on his hobby of taxidermy (using roadkill for subject matter) and a mother in hair rollers, hideous glasses and constant alcoholic and smoking fugue. It’s a lonely upbringing and Mary escapes into imagination and her love of chocolate and the animated show Nibblets. One day while her mother shoplifts items from the local post office Mary leafs through an international phone book, wondering at the ‘strange’ names in an American directory. On an impulse she decides to take down the details of one random name and write him a letter to ask about life in America.

Max is a middle-aged, obese Jewish man living in 70s New York, also a lonely, damaged soul (as we find out later, he has Asperger’s, which is one reason he has difficulty in relating to people until Mary writes to him), flitting between a succession of jobs, a number of fish (which keep dying and being replaced) and trips to Overeater’s Anonymous which are rather defeated by his love of chocolate. He is quite surprised to receive Mary’s letter, complete with some samples of chocolates from Australia and very soon they are swapping letters, chocolates and little bits of their isolated lives to something neither had before - a friend. It’s at this point that the situation could be seen as straying into potential landmine territory - lonely young girl corresponding with isolated, lonely older man? You can almost imagine a red-top tabloid screaming headline now. But it isn’t like that. Somehow these two damaged souls have found what they needed, a friend, and an unlikely relationship blossoms before, inevitably, hitting some more stormy seas, not least when a more grown up Mary, now at college, studies psychology and uses Max as her main subject.

The film doesn’t try to hide the shortcomings of the characters any more than it tries to wallow in sentiment - it simply presents them and the many little facets of growing up and life that everyone can identify with, from finding out the illicit pleasures as a child of sneaking a tin of sweetened condensed milk to the shattering implications of a dear friendship being damaged (and also presents Aspergers with some sensitive understanding). It’s often funny, sometimes quite sad, but even when sad it is that beautiful kind of sadness that draws you in. The animation is all done in stop-motion and looks wonderful. I have no problem with CG animation but there is something I always find fascinating about stop-motion, the fact that, as the producer (who did a Q&A after the screening) remarked, everything you see on the screen was there, it was all designed, built and then painstakingly moved by hand, frame by frame; its all real, every item you see on screen was touched by a person putting life into it.

(Mary Daisy Dinkle wrapping up another package for her pen friend)

The voice talent boasts Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman, both agreeing to work for a fraction of their normal movie fees simply for the love of it (another indicator of how good this film is) and the narration comes from none other than the great Barry Humphries, who apparently they were huge fans of and terrified to meet, but he was charming and agreed to do it, even if he noticed Mary’s mother had a slight touch of the Dame Edna about her. It’s rare to see independent animation features and even rarer to see one aimed at an adult audience (although I think it’s also quite suitable for a YA audience too). There’s more than a touch of the Edward Gorey (or his modern heir, Tim Burton) to some of the style and humour, not so much Gothic but in the dark humour that life often throws up. What can I say except I absolutely loved it and, like the Secret of Kells, I hope that some film distributors pick it up and give it a proper general release here. Meantime, if you see it on the programme of a film festival near you, take my tip and go and see it.

"I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon"

"And if the dam breaks open many years too soon

And if there is no room upon the hill

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too

I'll see you on the Dark Side Of The Moon" (Pink Floyd, Brain Damage)

I'm currently enjoying my annual smorgasbord of movies at the Edinburgh International Film Festival where among the movies from around the world is a low budget, independent British film by Duncan Jones (previously known as Zowie Bowie - yes, David's wee boy, but commendably he's deliberately not playing on that, he wants folks to come on the film's merits). Moon is a most unusual beast - it's a British low-budget, indy movie that isn't a social realism piece set in a housing estate. Not that I have any problems with those (some bloody good films come out of that field), but it often seems in the UK film industry today we either make small budgeted social realism dramas or larger budgeted (still small by US standards though) historical costume dramas for the most part. A low budget Brit indy science fiction film? Unusual. And one which uses story and intelligence in lieu of dazzling effects and big explosions? Remarkable.

I was lucky enough to bag tickets to the UK premiere of Moon at the Film Fest here - both scheduled screenings sold out very quickly (although it has been added to next Sunday's Best of the Fest, essentially a Second Chance Sunday for sold out flicks from the Festival, book now before they are gone). Right from the start I liked it. Sam Rockwell (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Frost/Nixon) takes on a pretty tough role as he is mostly the only actor in the main scenes, apart from a few small spots (mostly video 'letters'), a technician manning a mining station on the far side of the moon on a three year stretch, his only company a computer called Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey (and with a screen showing emoticons as a 'face').

As the film opens there's a bit of a Dark Star vibe to the look and feel of it; like Dark Star, or the later Nostromo in Alien, this isn't the gleaming future of mighty starships like Star Trek, this is space as workplace. Its grimy, its worn, its dirty in places. Rockwell's Sam Bell at the start is a shaggy haired, straggly beared man talking to himself and his sickly looking plants or obsessively carving out his model of his small town home as he works alone on the Moon. The end of his three year tour of duty is approaching and Sam is counting the days until he can go home to his wife and little daughter. Rockwell does an admirable job of creating a convincing portrayal of a man who has been as isolated as it is about as possible for any human to be (even the live communication link has been lost due to solar flares, he can only receive and send recorded messages via a relay, no real time communication). His twitches and habits are believable of a man in that situation and the emotional desperation as he watches a video letter from his wife with their wee girl on her lap saying "daddy is an astronaut" is incredibly touching, you can feel his desire to be with his family coming out of the screen, but Rockwell wisely plays it subtly, restrained, not over the top or hystrionic, which enhances the emotional resonance, I thought.

There are little hints that the constant isolation and lack of even real time communications are taking their psychological toll on Sam. Watching a video from his wife it looks as if there was a sudden blip - did something change there or his strained mind just imagining things? Making a cuppa he turns around to see a young, teenage girl sitting in his chair, accidentally scalding himself in shock. He looks again and of course there is no-one there, how could there be? His sleep and dreams are equally disturbed. Returning to work he takes a lunar rover out onto the Moon's surface and approaches one of the huge, automated mining machines, making its way across the surface on its tracks, spewing out chunks of regolith from the back as it moves. When an accident occurs and the rover crashes into the mining machine, Sam blacks out, only to wake up in the base's medical bay with a concerned Gerty tending to him. How exactly did he return to the base, considering there was no-one else around to rescue him from his crashed rover? Confined to the base 'for his own safety' until he is recovered Sam suspects there is more going on than he's been told and engineers a method to get outside and investigate. What he finds will shake him to the core - assuming its real and not the product of a mind collapsing under years of isolation syndrome.

And on the plot I shall say no more because to do otherwise would mean revealing potential spoilers, which I'd rather not do (I will also warn you that a BBC article on the film here, while interesting, does, in my opinion, blow a major plot point, which is damned careless, so be warned if you follow that link). On the production side, as I noted Rockwell does extremely well with a challenging role, the feeling of desperation and tension are palpable and the effects have a suitably dirty, grungy look to them. I had the impression that the exteriors were model shots - not because they were poor, I hasten to add, but they had that lovely physical feel that CGI sometimes just can't manage (especially for dirtier, grittier looks such as the mining machines), reminding me (pleasantly) of the brilliant Moon models used for the likes of Space 1999. Director Jones and several of his crew were present at the screening and confirmed that they did indeed use physical models for those effects - in fact the same effects man who created the Nostromo worked on their models, which, as I said, looked perfect in the context of the film (and added to the physicality of the film in my opinion).

(director Duncan Jones talking to the audience in the Cameo Cinema after Moon's UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Saturday, larger version on my Flickr)

When asked about the budget (around £2.5 million - yes, really) Jones said that doing an SF flick for that money wasn't too hard, but convincing the financiers that they could make this movie within that budget was much more difficult, they all assumed they would need a much bigger budget to achieve what they were planning (we should have asked for more money, quipped the producer). But through ingenuity they made it work - as their visual effects/designer guy pointed out its amazing the sets you can make with duct tape, paint and a bunch of Ikea flat pack furniture items (not that you can tell, it all looked very convincing). Jones told the packed (and very supportive) Edinburgh audience that they loved the SF genre and they wanted to veer away from effects-reliant 'tentpole' blockbusters and make 'smart SF'. I'd say they've done so. Its a hugely admirable effort (especially for his first feature), Rockwell is convincing as the central character Sam, the look and feel of the film is suitably grimy, its quite a while before we can really tell if Sam is cracking up and hallucinating it all or if something sinister really is going on and from the look of it you'd never believe it was made for such a small budget.

Its British, its Indy and its bloody good science fiction. Moon gets its general release in the UK on the 17th of July (appropriately close to the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing) and is well deserving of your attention and support. I'm guessing with that sort of budget they won't have a mighty studio marketing machine, so if you like it, spread the word and give the guys some much deserved support for creating some bloody good Brit movie SF.

Film Festival - celeb spotting

The red carpet on the opening night gala for this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival. Saw them setting up as I walked home from work this week so I stopped to watch. Sorry, the pics aren't the best quality as I had to stand on the other side of the road with all the pro media lot in the way, but you takes what you can at these things - still a fun thing to see on your way home from work! All the best celebs come to my part of town, you know :-) Click on the pics to see the bigger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr.







Alan Cumming - boy he's come a long way since his Victor and Barry days when we saw him back in the old Mayfest in Glasgow.







Director Sam Mendes on the red carpet.








Sir Sean Connery returns from some sun-kissed foreign golf course to be with his chosen people (for as long as the tax avoidance allows!). I always think it must feel a bit odd to him when he comes every year (and to be fair to him he always supports the EIFF) as this cinema in the city's Fountainbridge area, built over part of the old S&N Brewery, is right next to where Sean's childhood home stood. He grew up on these streets, now each year he returns as the most famous living Scotsman.

Sebastian's Voodoo

This lovely animation, Sebastian's Voodo, by Joaquin Baldwin comes via Boing Boing and is in the running for a short film award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival; you can vote for it via YouTube and while you're at it check out some other animations (and other works) from the National Film Board of Canada on YT:

Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus

Giant monster movies are generally pretty damned dumb, but often good 'leave brain at the door' fun movies (best viewed after a minimum of two pints), but the trailer to Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus looks even sillier than most - giant shark biting battleship? Huge octopus arm twatting planes out of mid air? Crazier than a midget on spring loaded burning stilts firing custard pies from a flan bazooka. And yet I think I might have to go and see this...

Watchmen - the Keene Act

Readers of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons seminal Watchmen graphic novel will already be aware of the Keene Act, legislation passed in the alternative America of the Watchmen to outlaw the superheroes as vigilantes. New Frontiersman (named for one of the magazines which crops up throughout the graphic novel) is a marketing site which has been slowly releasing bits and pieces of pics, info and viral videos ahead of the film version of the Watchmen coming out in March, including this latest one, done in the style of a really bad 70s public information film (incidentally, there's a possibility I may be back on the BBC radio again to talk about the movie next month too, more if and when its settled):



(link via the FPI blog)

This Way Up

Britain's nominee for possible Oscar glory in the short animation category this year is This Way Up, a lovely little Edward Gorey-esque dark comedy of a father and son undertakers attempting to bury a little old lady after an unlikely accident sees the hearse flattened with a boulder, taking them struggling across country with the coffin and then into the Afterlife in their quest to finish the job, all performed without words. For a change instead of just reading about it or seeing a clip we can actually watch the entire short animation on the BBC's Film Network site (the Beeb part funded the film by Nexus' Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith). While you're there have a poke around the rest of that site because the Beeb have some other animation and other short film gems there (I'm not sure if it is geo-locked to only play for folks with UK ISPs or not though and you will need Windows Media Player or Real Player to watch it).

Who Watches the Watchmen - Japanese style

A Japanese trailer for the Watchmen movie, via Michael Moran at the Times' Blockbuster buzz:

“For me, animation meant children’s films that you let them watch in order that they will leave you alone...” - respected Israeli war journalist Ron Ben-Yishai explains to the BBC that he was less than enthusiastic when Ari Folman approached him about contributing to the animated documentary Waltz With Bashir. Folman talked the 65 year old reporter around, fortunately - his segment, as the BBC article notes, is fairly brief, but as the first reporter to risk life and limb to enter the site of the refugee camp massacres his testimony is essential to the story; he’s now quite convinced by Folman’s animated efforts: ”The animation is adding a layer, a psychological layer of his trauma. In a normal documentary film you couldn’t have documented all these things - like the dreams…. Believe me, I have a lot of nightmares of this kind. After being in war situations… it comes to haunt you.”

Waltz With Bashir is a film I had been waiting to see for some time, following the good word of mouth it had been picking up on the international film festival circuit. An animated, feature-length documentary is a fairly unusual beast in the film world, and as someone who is fascinated by animation in its many forms I was intrigued. Ari Folman’s film looks back to the war in the Lebanon in 1982, seen through the memories, dreams and nightmares of former Israeli conscripts. The film opens with a pack of rabid dogs, barking, growling, running through the city streets, eyes glowing red, terrifying people, before arriving outside a building where they bark viciously at the inhabitant. The scene cuts to a bar and Folman is listening to his friend recount the dream of the dogs, which he has repeatedly, a mental echo of the war when he was forced to shoot dogs before their patrol could enter a village so the dogs couldn’t bark a warning (Shakespeare’s line “let slip the dogs of war” sprung to mind). When he asks Folman what bad dreams he has from the war Folman answers that his memory is mostly blank from that period. His friend’s troubled dreams spark the first glimmerings of memories and images from the war in Folman’s mind and so he sets out to talk to former comrades, slowly piecing together events surrounding their time in Lebanon, culminating in a horrific massacre of civilians in refugee camps.

Folman travels to meet old comrades, some fairly open about their war experiences, others quieter, more troubled; in between he talks to his therapist friend, troubled by his own missing memories and wondering what he saw or did that caused his mind to blank so much out. As anyone would be in such circumstances he wants to know but is also worried what he may learn about himself in the process. The film itself is mostly non-linear, made up of frequent flash backs as the former soldiers talk to Folman. But this is no straight ‘talking heads’ documentary - many of the men have only fragmented memories and images, often dreamlike or even hallucinatory. Folman himself is jarred into remembering a scene of himself and some comrades floating in the sea like drowned men; slowly they come to life and, quite naked, shamble slowly towards the war-torn shore, the scene lit by the eery light of flares. It reminded me of one of cinema’s strong visual scenes, Martin Sheen emerging from the dark waters in Apocalypse Now (and like Apocalypse Now there is much of Heart of Darkness about this film) crossed with a sort of D-Day landing but by undead, zombie soldiers, slowly shambling through the surf, across the beach and into the war zone.

And much of the film is seen in this manner; while some scenes are related and shown fairly literally (such as an ambush on a column of tanks) many are hazy, drawn from confused images in the memories of men who saw more than they wanted to and still see it frequently in their dreams, or composed entirely of fantasy images and hallucinations (one man on a boat heading to the war imagines a giant naked woman, who lifts him gently from the ship and swims away with him nestled child-like against her stomach as the ship and his comrades behind them explode into flame; another distances himself from events by pretending he is taking photos of it for an article). Its something a live action documentary simply couldn’t capture but the medium of animation is suited perfectly for; the animation takes us as close as we can be to the dreams and nightmares of those men, as well as showing how different minds react to the stress, how they interpret what they saw and endured, the strains, the stress, the guilt over actions forced on them or simple guilt for being alive when friends are dead. The film doesn’t try to excuse actions, nor does it seek to judge and condemn, it simply shows and shares those events and memories.

(escape fantasy, sexual fantasy or simply the childlike urge to have a mother figure taking you away from harm - one of Folman’s friends recounts his vision of a giant, naked woman who carries him from the boat taking him to battle)

Popular music of the period features throughout, especially in scenes where the soldiers are given leave to visit home. A home life which now seems alien and bizarre - at the front they dream of being home, at home they feel strange, uncomfortable. Around them people are playing music, video games, enjoying everyday life, all familiar things which now seem so odd compared to what the soldier has been living. In this Folman scores again, showing us just a bit of the contrast the soldier (of any war) encounters when they come home and try to be ‘normal’ but wondering how everyday life can be so ordinary after what they have seen (its no surprise that many former soldiers have to deal with mental health and a myriad of other problems when they return to civilian life. A peace treaty might end a war politically, but it doesn’t end in the minds of many who had to prosecute it).

Its very powerful material, extremely emotional and often very, very uncomfortable to watch - but then, it should be. The last act leads up to the slaughter of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in refugee camps (spoiler warning, you may not want to read this last bit if you are going to see the film), the very event that Folman has been wondering about as he probes the gaps in his memory. The Israeli soldiers themselves are not directly involved, but they are ordered to encircle the camps while their Christian militia allies enter them, ostensibly looking for terrorists. They see women, old folks, children, being rounded up and loaded onto trucks; Folman flashes back to an earlier generation of his own family being loaded onto trucks by the Nazis. What happens next is, sadly, a matter of historical record - hundreds of innocents were slaughtered. Ben-Yishai, the reporter, was on the front lines and following leads from Israeli soldiers troubled about what they suspect is going on inside the camps, he investigates, bringing it to the attention of the government.

(Lebanon, once called ‘the Paris of the East’, shattered and ruined by war; a scene probably familiar to many from news bulletins in the early 80s)

In the very last scenes animation is suddenly, jarringly, dispensed with in favour of Ben-Yishai’s news footage. Its simply horrific and the sudden move from animation to news film re-enforces that horror. Its dreadfully hard to take - I found myself seriously struggling to maintain some emotional control - but its something that should be seen by a wider audience (and I wish we could make our so-called world leaders sit and watch it before they decide on more foreign adventures). Like Apocalypse Now it is by turns fascinating and yet often horrific, but its engrossing and powerful. Sad to think Folman must have been working on it when Hizzbolah were firing rockets at Israeli civilians and Israel was bombing Lebanon once more just the other year. Which, regrettably, makes this not just a look at a historic event from decades ago but very contemporary to ongoing strife in the Middle East and elsewhere, while the animated nature of the bulk of the film guarentees images that will stick in the viewer’s mind long after the film has finished. One of the most unusual and remarkable animated films I’ve seen; as I said, it can be hard to watch, but you should try.Waltz With Bashir is on general release in the UK now; a graphic novel version of the story is due soon.

(I originally wrote this review up for the Forbidden Planet blog)

Best of the Year - some faves from 2008

While I was off last week I managed to grab a few hours to pick out some of my favourite graphic novels and books (and a handful of movies) for my annual best of the year feature for the FP blog (there are a number of other Best of Year picks up from several other contributors I asked/harassed into sharing some of their faves too) and thought I would repeat it on here. Of course, I'm sure I missed out several I meant to mention but the list was getting too long and taking up too much time already so I had to draw the line:

I meant to post my own Best of the Year choices before the end of 2008, but Christmas, birthday and New Year all got in the way, as did my own propensity to keep adding to the list so it just kept getting longer and longer… (I couldn’t help it, everytime I looked at my bookshelves I kept realising there was another book or comic I had to mention). Still, finally here it is with apologies to anyone who I meant to include and simply forgot to get in there (a lot of 2008 went past in a bit of a blur for me):

Books

The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan, Gollancz

I’ve been a huge fan of Richard’s work right from the start (with the powerhouse Noir-SF Altered Carbon) and have been eager to see what resulted when he put aside science fiction for his first foray into fantasy - especially as he intended to bring his hard-boiled Noir edge to the genre. I wasn’t disappointed - some damned good action contrasted with the horror of the actual combat, giving the reader the thrill of the combat and action mixed with guilt at the disturbing consequences of it all. Add in some clever commentary about racism, sexism and religious intolerance, not to mention a very sexually active gay lead hero and you have an intoxicating combination.

Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod, Orbit

Edinburgh, Scotland, the near future. The Faith Wars are years past with religion not exactly banned but highly frowned upon by public and governments alike, being blamed by most for the rash of wars and troubles which extended out from Iraq on into the 21st century. When a priest operating out of a normal house in the city if found dead is it a straight murder or the start of a new faith (or anti-faith) series of atrocities? Ken, one of the smartest commentators on contemporary politics and society in modern SF, draws in conflicts from the Middle East, religious zealotry, secularism and politics and along the way manages to throw in a Creationist park with robot cavemen in New Zealand, nods to Scottish history, hints of the future (like the Space Elevator) and also gets to indulge himself in a proper Edinburgh detective novel too. Bloody brilliant.

Halting State, Charles Stross, Orbit

Charlie continues to carve out a hugely impressive name for himself in SF&F. Like Ken’s Night Sessions this too involves detectives in a near-future, independent Scottish Republic, but there the similarity ends. Called to investigate a bank robbery the police arrive at what turns out to be an old nuclear bunker (coincidentally a real location, right across from my old college). The bank job was carried out by orcs; the bank is a virtual one in an online game. The detectives are about to charge the company with wasting police time before they are informed just how much ‘real’ money the virtual items are worth and how much these games contribute to the economy (which means political friends to lean on the cops). From there Charlie, with much dark humour, mixes in reality, virtuality and even some hi-tech possible espionage. Genius.

The Wall of America, Thomas M Disch (Tachyon)

Disch is one of those authors that everyone in SF&F respects and yet few have actually read (I’ll confess to only having read a fraction of his work myself). This is a posthumously published short story collection following his suicide on July 4th of this year. In most short story collections, even by the best writers, there are always a few tales you just don’t care for as much as the others. This is the rare exception: each of the tales - some only a few paragraphs, others several pages - are clever, intricate jewels, from an unusual take on vampires and immigrant culture to family life post-Rapture to a cunning visit to the court of Oedipus and Jocasta (the cleverest I’ve read since the great Brian Aldiss tackled those famous characters a few years ago), a seductive water sprite, why the Christian God doesn’t have a wife, extreme performance art and the eponymous Wall of America itself, a Homeland Security construction across the northern border to keep those troublesome Cannucks out which artists turn into the world’s largest outdoor gallery. It’s a wonderfully diverse selection of intelligent works, elegantly written, clever and sometimes rather biting.

There were a lot of other damned fine SF&F books I picked up in 2008; it was another very good year for some seriously high quality writing in the genre. There isn’t enough room to list every one I enjoyed this year, but I’ll just briefly have to give special mentions to the Temporal Void by Peter F Hamilton (the second of his current trilogy and like many of his other books a massively thick tome and yet one that still flies past at a great pace), The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi (following on from the excellent Old Man‘s War; what seems like pulp Starship Troopers boy‘s space war yarn turns out to be clever and bloody gripping), Bloodheir by Brian Ruckley (the second part of his Godless World, some damned fine hard heroic fantasy), Small Favour by Jim Butcher (I don’t know how but Jim makes each successive Dresden Files novel better and better; I am addicted to them now) and Half the Blood of Brooklyn by Charlie Huston (short, sharp and nasty, Charlie continues to mix 70s era Scorcese with vampires; like shooting heroin with a .357 instead of a needle).

And also on the SF&F front I need to give an extra special mention to Interzone (and sister publication Black Static) which continues to fly the flag for short, new SF from established writers and new talent, as well as the usual mix of interviews, reviews and features (the December issue is available now and has some terrific short stories; Aliette de Bodard‘s Butterfly Falling at Dawn is particularly intoxicating and Gord Sellar‘s Country of the Young was one of the most interesting angles on aging versus artificial eternal youth I‘ve read since Jack Deighton‘s thoughtful Son of the Rock).

Movies

Paris (directed by Cédric Klapisch)

I can’t resist a good French film with Juliette Binoche; this multi-character flick may have the Queen of French Cinema as the sister to a dancer lamenting the turn of his life as his health deteriorates while awaiting a transplant but around this Klapisch weaves several different tales and characters all overlapping one another (think the excellent and intricate Short Cuts), life, love, death, regret and hope all set in the beautiful City of Light.

The Dark Knight (directed by Christopher Nolan)

Hard to say any more than others have already said - Nolan (who I’ve admired since the brilliant Memento), free in this second film from having the handicap of needing to include an origin story, creates a more complete and satisfying work here, the dark anti-hero hero and Heath Ledger’s psychotic Joker.

Waltz With Bashir (directed by Ari Folman)

Folman’s unusual animated documentary has rightly created a buzz on the film festival circuit and finally got its UK and US release just a few weeks ago. Exploring memories and dreams Folman talks to former comrades about their time in the Israeli army during the war in the Lebanon in the early 80s, with the animation allowing the viewers to move into the nightmares and dreams that have haunted many of them since then; I won’t go into it again since I posted a review of it recently here.

Man on Wire (directed by James Marsh)

Another documentary and another flick which established its reputation first on the film festival circuit, acrobat and tightrope walker Philippe Petit, following a stunt involving walking a high wire strung between the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, reads about a massive new structure being built in New York - the Twin Towers and determines to break in covertly just as it is finished and walk a tightrope between the roofs of these colossal structures. Rightly, I think, the film avoids discussion of the eventual fate of those now iconic buildings on 9/11, although archive footage of the early construction showing the massive foundations and the ‘basin’ have eerie echoes of what we saw after their destruction. Petit comes across as arrogant and selfish quite often, but if he wasn’t he’d never have managed such a magnificently mad but astonishing feat. It isn’t for those who suffer vertigo, but it is amazing; a man, on a wire suspended above New York.

Idiots and Angels (directed by Bill Plympton)

I love Bill’s work and was delighted when the Edinburgh Film Festival announced that it would be screening this, just a few weeks after it debuted at a festival in New York. Even better Bill was there in person to chat with the audience before and after the film, then he created little thumbnail sketches for each and everyone present on the way out; there’s a longer review I posted to be found back here on the blog.

Honourable mentions also go to Elegy, Le Voyage de Ballon Rouge, Hellboy II: the Golden Army, the belting piece of hi-octane that was Quantum of Solace and the animation anthology Peur(s) du Noir.

Graphic Novels

Stickleback, Ian Edginton and D’Israeli (Rebellion)

Whenever we hear that Edginton and D’Israeli are collaborating on a new project we tend to get pretty excited - they are firm favourites with a number of the FP crew. Stickleback collects two recent related stories from 2000 AD concerning the eponymous mis-shapen master criminal. Richard reviewed it recently so I won’t go on about it too much now - suffice to say I thought it was a superb bit of Victorian Steampunk (love those giant robotic tanks which look like a cross between 19th century robots and Fred Dibnah’s steam traction engine), magical fantasy, horror (a demonic Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley complete with zombie cowboys and Indians) and crime, its Lovecraft meets Charles Dickens, with multiple references to spot throughout (including even one from Carry On Screaming!) while D’Israeli’s new style of art is brilliantly atmospheric. Even better than their Leviathan outing; here’s hoping we see more of Stickleback.

Swallow Me Whole, Nate Powell (Top Shelf)

I wasn’t familiar with Nate’s work prior to reading this, but I was quickly taken in by it. Using a lot of black and some scratchy inks his art conjures up the worlds of a brother and sister with mental health problems (in addition to family problems and the usual high school teen problems); the way they see and interpret the world is quite different from others around them, which can be alienating for them, especially in a conformist world that demands we all see things the same way or else be judged to be abnormal. Swallow Me Whole doesn’t judge, doesn’t preach, it shows different ways people can see their world and who is to say which version is right? And although we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover I think I have to also mention that Top Shelf have printed Swallow Me Whole in a small hardback format that is rather lovely.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel (Jonathan Cape)

Alison rightly won many plaudits last year for Fun Home; this collection of several year’s worth of her Dykes to Watch Out For strip is a different kettle of fish though, an ongoing, multi-character, open-ended series, almost like a soap opera (but in a good way - I normally hate soaps, but I loved this). I’ve read some of Dykes before, but this was my first really concentrated burst of them and it made a huge difference to read so many back to back. With our lesbian leads and their friends aging in real time its very easy to get sucked into their lives and for anyone past the age of 30 who remembers some of the real world events going on as we pass through the years here there’s a real touch of empathy with the characters, with the ‘I remember that’ factor and also the emotional empathy as we see the characters getting older and having to deal with exactly the same things we all have to, from losing beloved pets to losing family members and welcoming (and worrying about) new ones, health, jobs, wondering what happened to the groundbreaking neighbourhood bookstore as the relentless march of the chain bookstores threatens them, wondering, as they get older, what happened to their youthful fire (one day street activists fighting for equality, another day they are worrying about mortgages and weeding the yard) and why the younger generation of lesbians are often so different from them (good lord, some even vote Republican!).

It’s a substantial collection covering a number of years and I found the best way was to read a little chunk at a time, moving through the 90s and into the 2000s; after a little while the cast became like old friends and I found myself eager to read another batch. I should also mention the cartoon intro Alison created for the collection which had me laughing my arse off and showed that while she’ll handle heavy subjects as well as humorous she’s also quite happy to poke fun at her own and her character’s foibles too.

Too Cool To Be Forgotten, Alex Robinson (Top Shelf)

I’ve been a huge fan of Alex Robinson for years, not least for Box Office Poison (the BOP scenes set in the bookstore made him a particular hero to the bookseller community), so I was really looking forward to this. When the central character is persuaded to try hypo-therapy to give up smoking he wakes up in his teens, reliving his high school years. What starts off as a bit of a humorous trip with a warm touch of nostalgia (the sort of feeling I get from watching an 80s movie like The Breakfast Club these days) starts to bring in the whiff of regret than any reader over the age of 35 will probably empathise with - was that really our youth, did we do that, why didn’t we do the other, where did it go and how did it lead to us being what we are now? Then the final reel takes us into a very emotional space, bringing a real lump to the throat…

Absolute Sandman Volume 3, Neil Gaiman et al (DC/Vertigo)

Okay, technically this is a reprint so perhaps I shouldn’t have it in my main list, but dammit I love this series and have shelled out now for all four volumes (I’m currently reading the fourth and final one over the holidays) and I think Neil’s work often benefits from re-visiting it to see little details and layers missed on previous reading while the over-sized pages of restored artwork let you feast visually on the numerous contributing artists, most especially the Ramadan chapter with art from P Craig Russell, a mix of the Arabian Nights and wonderful, colourful fantasies like The Thief of Baghdad. The linkage between the Golden Baghdad of flying carpets and genies and the modern, war-torn city still gets me. The only problem I have with these volumes is that because they are so damned huge its like trying to hold a Times Atlas up and its pretty strenuous on the wrists - these really need a home with a proper library room and a large lectern to rest it on (when I finish book 4 I think I should get a piece of tempered glass, lay it on top of them and used them as a coffee table).

Britten & Brülightly, Hannah Berry (Jonathan Cape)

I loved Hannah’s debut work, a detective tale with lovely, painted artwork, with a damaged shamus and his partner, who at first seems like a voice in his head, making the reader think perhaps he’s dead and Britten just thinks he still talks to him, but actually he turns out to be a teabag (“a teabag with needs”) advising and chastising his lonely partner as he accepts a case of possible society murder from a beautiful and rich widow. I loved the story and its old-fashioned British setting, perfectly realised by the lovely art. I was lucky enough to meet Hannah in person at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August and I’m really looking forward to seeing more work from her in the future; you can read an interview with Hannah here on the blog.

The Sands of Sarasvati, Petri Tolppanen and Jussi Kaakinen, based on the novel by Risto Isomäki, (Tammi Publishers)

I only posted a review of this a couple of weeks ago so won’t say too much again here, except to say this was my first ever graphic novel from Finland and I really enjoyed this near-future piece of science fiction, mixing ancient civilisations, contemporary environmental concerns and geology, all executed in a style reminiscent of the better adult BD from Europe; here’s hoping Tammi make a deal with a UK or US publisher or distributor so it can be made more easily available in 2009.

That Salty Air, Tim Sievert (Top Shelf)

Another artist who was new to me, I thought Tim’s work had a deceptively simple charm which starts as very all-ages friendly before moving into a very dark place as the fisherman’s straightforward life which he is perfectly content with is destroyed by loss and grief and the self-destructive actions they drive him towards which could cost him and those around him everything. I think anyone who’s lost someone important to them will recognise his mix of utter despair infused with a fire of anger at the world for what its done to him, what its taken away and how awfully easy it is for that combination to drown your soul and blind you to the love still around you.

As with the SF&F books there were far more good comics crossed my desk than I have space or time to write about here, so I’ll conclude this (already longer than I meant it to be) Best of the Year with a few quick, honourable mentions which have to go to the ongoing (and very welcome) reprint series of classic 2000 AD strips, especially the Complete Judge Dredd Case Files (“Chopper for Oz!”) and the total nostalgia trip I had from re-reading the Complete Ro-Busters (collecting the original Starlord then 2000 AD strips and introducing us to Hammerstein and Ro-Jaws, two of the best robot characters in comics) which I’ve been loving (and oh, Kev O’Neill, Mick McMahon and Dave Gibbons art to luxuriate in!).

Props also to Classical Comics - I’m not the target audience for these literary adaptations but I still really enjoyed them (and think they are perfect for getting younger readers into the classics and as study guides for teachers to use); Jon Haward’s Macbeth and Declan Shalvey’s Frankenstein both contained some cracking art which should excite the most reluctant reader. Sticking with the classics mention should also be made of Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy’s interpretation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which raised the profile of Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my favourite authors since childhood) and comics in Scotland with plenty of mainstream media coverage (not to mention being a major part of the National Library of Scotland’s comic art exhibition in the spring of 2008; how satisfying to see comics taken so seriously by the NLS).

The Galago anthology of Swedish underground comics, From the Shadow of the Northern Lights, also opened up my eyes to some new (to me and I imagine to many English language readers) artists, Jeff Lemire’s third Essex County volume drew me right back into that series (all three highly recommended), Veronique Tanaka’s ‘silent’ and unusual work Metronome was a fascinating exercise in fairly minimal storytelling with repeating similar frames which created almost a feel of animation. Andy Winters’ Septic Isle was a nice twist on the war on terror (with right wing nutters as the protagonists rather than religious zealots) and I really must give a mention for Alex Irvine’s serious effort with the Vertigo Encyclopedia as a great reference work on DC’s mature readers imprint.

Overall its been a year with some bloody good books and comics to enjoy on all sorts of subjects, from new talent and established favourites, fascinating new works and some quality reprint editions of classic material (such as the fine hardback of Bryan Talbot’s Tale of One Bad Rat). And I haven’t even touched on the seemingly always expanding range of online comics which are increasingly becoming something we all need to keep an eye on for new works and new talent - the Dean Haspiel-edited Next Door Neighbor series on Smithmag has been a real treasure trove of short works by numerous creators and Kevin Colden’s intriguing Fishtown drew me in then made the jump to print (as is one of my faves from 2007, La Muse). I’m quite sure I’m forgetting to mention some of the creators whose work I’ve enjoyed this year, but I’ve already rambled on far longer than I originally meant to. Mind you, over-long ramblings aside I think that itself can be seen a positive statement on the SF&F and comics scenes - there were simply more good books and comics than I could realistically cover here even I wrote umpteen more paragraphs and I’m sure there will be some outstanding works coming our way in 2009.

Hellboy interviews

Recently I had the opportunity to conduct some short ten minute phone interviews (hey, short call is better than no call, I wasn't going to turn then down!) in the run up to the DVD release of Hellboy II: the Golden Army for the Forbidden Planet blog, which went up over the weekend - I got to talk to two of the cast, Doug Jones who plays Abe Sapien (and is also the Faun in the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth) and Anna Walton who plays Princess Nuala, then rounded it off with a brief chat with the original creator of the Hellboy comics, Mike Mignola, which was an extra special treat as I've been a huge fan of his Hellboy comics for years.

Mark Millar talks Wanted

Over on the Forbidden Planet blog my colleague Mark poses some questions to another Mark, Mark Millar, Scottish comics superstar (Civil War, Ultimates) about his comics and the movie versions of Wanted and Kick Ass. On the blog there's a second, shorter video with an excerpt from the special effects creation extras on the Wanted DVD too.

The last man on Earth

Grabbed some time to go and sit and watch I Am Legend before I go back to work. Now I had already surmised from trailers and articles in Empire that yet again Hollywood had not done the book. Third time a film has been made of Richard Matheson's classic 50s novel of Cold War paranoia and humanity's seemingly endless ability for self-destruction and third time they haven't done the bloody book! Come one, please....

That said the film, although different from the book - relocated to New York, which actually works well during the scene of Will Smith hunting wild game in an overgrown Times Square, main character Robert Neville is now an army doctor working on a cure, the scientifically created vampires are now fast, aggressive zombies (although still photophobic) - it actually works very well in creating a sense of isolation and terror as the last man in the world tries to hold it together in a Manhattan populated only by him, his dog and a legion of the infected.

Instead of an unspecified biological agent from a war (as in the book) the cause here is genetic engineering in an attempt to beat cancer, although even if you knew nothing about the story going in you could guess nothing good would come of a medical breakthrough by a character with a name like Doctor Crippen (a cameo by Emma Thompson). Scenes where Neville heads to the DVD store during daylight to withdraw films and return old ones illustrate how he is trying to use routine to keep himself together, rather than simply grabbing whatever he wants from the store. Populating the shop with store window dummies so it looks occupied and he has someone to 'talk' to adds to that feeling, being both slightly amusing and disturbing at the same time, stirring sympathy for Neville.

(SPOILER WARNING: don't read on if you are going to see it, I won't describe the whole finale, but it might spoil it for you if you are planning to see it)

Which makes it all the more annoying when the final section totally destroys what had been so carefully built up earlier, opting for the big fights with masses of CGI infected, big bangs and adding a redemption arc which clashes with the themes established earlier in the same way the original 'happy ending' forced on Blade Runner on its original release, really annoying the hell out of me, Hollywood managing an interesting, bleak, disturbing film then getting cold feet and going for SF CGI action fest at the end. And the CGI is annoying because the infected are hyped up creatures (why? they are diseased, why do they have amazing superhuman abilities now???), leaping up high buildings and their leader's jaws opening preternaturally wide as he yells - yes, they come right out of the Mummy (except some infected dogs which was copied shamelessly from Resident Evil), which was fine for the Mummy which was daft but fun and knew it, this was serious and bleak and psychological then went all cartoony and bollocksed it up.

And if they had stuck to the bloody book in the first place they might have avoided it. The book is far more effective - each night Neville has to be home and barricaded in his home before sunset. Outside his home many of the infected who have become vampire-like creatures due to the virus are people he knows, friends, neighbours (his next door neighbour bellowing 'Neville!' each night seems worse than simple roaring fiends in the movie, more personal) and in a harrowing flashback we see Neville in the book burying his wife then finding her resurrected by the virus and coming back to try and kill him and feed on him. In the book there are live and dead vampires as the virus mutates living victims but also resurrects the dead, who act differently. None of this comes in the film. In the book Neville hunts them by day as they lie in their comas, staking them and wondering why it is that this method of killing from myths works, all the time becoming more paranoid, more bloody and violent himself, staring into the Neitzchen abyss and having it stare back into him, becoming a monster as he fights monsters.

I won't spoil the ending of the book here, but suffice to say Matheson maintains the bleak atmosphere he established effectively with such commendable economy (the book is very short), a skill he used also as a screenwriter (he would work on many of the Vincent Price-Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe movies), in contrast to the movie which ruins itself at that point. And the title I Am Legend has a very different, darker explanation at the end of Matheson's powerful novel than the film. Film - watchable but be prepared to be suddenly let down at the clunking gear change towards the end (and what a shame, the earlier bits as I said are effective and Smith is allowed to act for once). Book - bloody brilliant, one of my personal top books of the last century, a real insight into the paranoia and fear of the Cold War era which still works perfectly in today's troubled world. You should read it.

"A colossal dick move"

The writer's strike in Hollywood is hitting production in TV and film quite hard, with a number of shows, including Battlestar Galactica and the new Bionic Woman (with the utterly gorgeous Michelle Ryan) now having to shut down because they've filmed episodes and run out of finished scripts, with no more in the pipeline while the strike continues. Family Guy has been hit by it - writer, creator and actor Seth McFarlane is out on sympathy with the writers - three new season episodes are almost finished but not quite and Fox announced they would just finish them without Seth and put them on air. Seth acknowledges they have the legal right to do it but going past him like this is obviously going to damage the relationship between him and the studio and would be, in his own words, "a colossal dick move." I love that and I think that's going to be one of my new phrases for anything spectacularly stupid. On the Family Guy front the special Star Wars episode has to be one of the funniest ones for a while and littered with SF and movie references that makes it Geek Heaven.

Still, it isn't all bad, this strike - the Beeb reports that a prequel to the god-awful Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, has been hit by it and postponed. Thank smeg for that, the world really doesn't need any more of that load of recycled conspiracy cobblers - even having the incredibly delectable Audrey Tautou in it wasn't enough to make it bearable.

And before you say, Joe, stop showing your literary snobbery, lots of folks enjoy the book (and movie), leave it alone, yes, fair point, I know they do, but if a lot of people like something it doesn't necessarily mean it is good, just that a lot of people can share the same bloody awful taste; it is the same factor boy bands and reality shows exploit to be popular. What I find even more depressing in the case of tosh like the Luigi Load is the number of brain-dead morons who mutter "I know it's fiction, but I reckon he's onto something here..." NO HE ISN'T!!! Why does the law prevent me from choking people who say that do death by forcing the smegging book down their throat?

Seachd - the Inaccessible Pinnacle

At the weekend I caught an absolutely beautiful Scottish film, the Gaelic-language Seachd: the Inaccessible Pinnacle. A man returns home from Glasgow to his dying grandfather back in the Western Isles, which leads to a series of tales - in many ways it is a story about stories. Rather fittingly, since Gaelic has an immensely rich oral tradition, a seam of folklore and tales told and retold by bards, singers and just ordinary folk generation after generation. In one scene the grandfather - who may have a much more personal link to the stories of centuries past he tells - talks to his wee grandson, angry and bitter after the death of his parents, rejecting his upbringing, calling it stupid and his grandad's stories false and tells him "no-one can tell the truth. We all tell stories."


(Angus Peter Campbell/Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul as the grandfather. A man well suited to play a storyteller since he was taught by Iain Crichton Smith and then later encouraged by Sorley MacLean at University. He is a published novelist and poet and it shows in his performance - like any good poet he has a feel for the fabric and rhythm of storytelling)

As a lifelong reader its hard for me to argue that point - narrative, story, is central to the human condition, it informs who we are in a personal day to day life (how was your day? You don't just say I did this, this and this, you tell it like a short story) and on the grander scale (the older stories which tell us on a deeper level who we are as a people, stories that repeat again and again - Arthur, the Iliad, Beowulf, Ramayana, the songs of the Dreamtime. We are story, we are words and images - we think in words and images, we talk in them, write and draw and sing in them. They're encoded into our DNA. And Seachd is stories within stories, stories defining and illustrating history, culture and the individuals too.


The film is beautiful to behold - much of it is shot on An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, better know to most of us as the Isle of Skye and the mighty Cuillins range. Even in scenes shot on gray, dull, overcast (very Scottish weather) days the imagery is stunning, clouds reaching down to the tops of the mountains, like angel's wings caressing the earth. The music (which is what is playing from the embedded player I got from the official site over on the left of the blog here) is also wonderful.

It makes my blood boil that the numpty heids at BAFTA have decided not to support this Scottish film and put it forward as their non-English language selection for Oscar consideration - not because they had something else they preferred to put forward either, they just didn't put Seachd or anything else forward, which totally undermines their supposed commitment to supporting British film-making (and nice to see London still haughtily mistreats Gaelic culture, some things never change it seems). BAFTA has attracted a raft of criticism, starting with the Scottish arts community, the Parliament and now worldwide condemnation for this shameful and inexcusable lack of support and rightly so. With the fine reception the film is receiving it makes BAFTA's ignorant decision look all the more foolish and ill-informed and I hope they are quite humiliated by their disgusting actions.



But enough negativity - the film itself is truly beautiful and moving; the seemingly simple idea of an elderly storyteller telling story after story doesn't convey the feel of the film. As with any story it isn't just the story, it is how the storytellers tell the story that often makes it and that's the case here. Its hauntingly beautiful, stories that you can feel on those deeper levels that the truly good stories can reach. Go and see it.