You keep calling me Walter. I don't like you.

So, at seven in the evening a film studies friend, obviously having spotted the bloody-smiley I've been sporting all week, asked "Watchmen's been out all day, have you seen it yet?" No, but I was just on the way to the IMAX. He wasn't a big fan of 300 (Jesu, is it only me?), and commented "if it doesn't amount more to a pretty picture, then at least you want to see it on IMAX so it's a really pretty picture."

Fair assessment, but I knew like I've never had faith in anything before, that it had to be good.
The following review contains spoilers, please don't read it.


Quid dicam? This film could not have been better. That's not to say it's the best film I've ever seen, far from it. But as an adaptation of Watchmen, it is everything I hoped.Every character inhabits their part perfectly, except maybe Ozymandeus and we'll come to that in a minute. Dr Manhattan is brilliantly realised - the little twitches of emotion on an emotionless face is just brilliant. Comedian and Rorschach, who I can only define as my two favourite things in the comic, are spot-on perfect. I mean, there's nothing more to say than that - they could have walked off the page. Ach, hell - everyone's good.

But Ozymandeus...Adrian Veidt of the books is such an all-American hero. He needs to be played by someone charasmatic, someone you know would jump out of a helicopter for you without even thinking. A young Robert Redford would be perfect. Now, Matthew Goode's intepretation was widely different to mine, incorrect if you ask me. Yet he did what he was trying to do very well, even if we disagree on characterisation, and I give him permission to play Dorian Gray whenever he likes.

The pacing was what I really worried about, and it's fine. The narrative constructs itself as a series of flashbacks, which is initially a little jarring, until you realise that's what it's doing. There are probably about 8 or 9 flashback sequences in the film, and they're there to colour the main narrative. And do so wonderfully. It's so deliberately episodic that it might have benefited from Tarantino style headings: "Mr White" and all.

As such, it's not so much a story constructed through plot but connections and symbols. Take the knowingly cliched soundtrack: Vietnam is scored to, what else, Ride of the Valykiries. President Nixon and his cabal plot nuclear war on the set of Dr Strangelove. We're operating in a parallel timeline, but the music instantly takes us back to our folk memory of our equivalent era - Sounds of Silence, Bob Dylan, 99 Luftballoons. And that's combined with things like Pat Buchanan and Andy Warhol, even more cultural icons, to let us know where we are. Just don't try and excuse the use of Hallejulah in a scene which was already pretty poor.

You don't even miss the squid. The concept of alien invasion works in the comic, because it's a comic about comics, and comics were always keen into their outer-space stories. It would have felt odd in the film. As an adaptation, this is how it's done, because it's so detail-rich and you know there was more. They lose half Rorschach's origin story, cut my favourite line, snip all over the shop - but the film still feels like a complete entity. I can't wait for the director's cut - apparently, there's going to be three ultimately: the two hours and forty minutes theatrical cut, the three hours and twenty minutes director's cut, and the four hours and thirty minutes ultimate cut, which has pretty much everything in there, including Tales of the Black Freighter.

But they did get some things wrong. I missed Hollis' death. I love both Nite Owls, and it's an important scene. The film could have easily been ten minutes longer to fit that in. With Hollis having been introduced, it's almost certainly been shot. They cut some of my favourite lines: I particularly missed Rorschach scolding Moloch for having a gun without a license. It cements the fact he sees all crime as equally wicked. Rorschach with the hacksaw? It was an awesome scene up until then, but it's not quite as twisted as what he does in the graphic novel (covers him in petrol, hands him a hacksaw, and advises him he probably shouldn't bother trying to cut through the handcuffs before pulling out a match). And the last fifteen minutes dropped the ball, horribly. They get to Karnak and...the ending has to be a kick in the gut. When I read Adrian use the phrase "half an hour ago" I dropped the book and burst into tears, justlikethat, in a way no comic has ever done, and very very few books. The film loses the impact, and I don't know why. And then you turn the page, and there's this full-page panel of a street filled with bodies and death. Then another, and another, and you just keep turning pages and there's nothing but death and silence. It's an awesomely powerful sequence, and an obvious candidate to keep - but they cut it. I don't understand why.

And they managed to make that whole bit at the end into one of those superhero endings which just keep fizzling in little events. It almost worked - particularly a key character claiming not to be a villain from a superhero comic. You could feel an indrawn breath across the whole audience, and this was an audience of fans, most likely all of whom had read the comic at least twice. But then they let the tension go again. The final scene of Laurie and Dan even lacked impact, and they needed about an extra 30 seconds to allow the true horror, genius and even meaning of Ozy's actions. In addition, I think the film was a little too overt in its condemnation of said actions. He's not a bad guy. I think it's telling that the last fifteen minutes were also those containing the most changes. It just lacks meaning, and it didn't feel real. Too rushed, I think.

A lot of people criticised it for a lack of depth. I understand them, to an extent - but it's only a film, and it did its best. And there were good changes too. It made sense for Ozymandeus to do the speaking at the meeting when Comedian burns the map. Although I missed Kitty's half of Rorschach's backstory, I appreciate it had to go - at that point in the film, the emphasis has to be on moving forward.

I mean, I'm only nitpicking because on the whole it was wonderful. Jesu, people! It's stayed true to the book's filthy darkness. Stylistically it's deliberately taken beats from the comic. The score is excellent - on the way to the IMAX, I kept thinking "I'm looking forward to the music", because I knew it had to ditch broad orchestrals in favour of electronica and ambient moodiness. Which it did, most of the time, to great effect. I'm listening to "Edward Blake - Comedian" at present, and it's taken obvious inspiration from Blade Runner. It's detail rich - you need several watches to take in the visuals, never mind the plot. Rorschach's mask - it's just so watchable. I particularly love it when it goes nuts. The hacksaw scene, the shapes just fly all over it. And when he gets thrown across the room, the shapes fly into chaos until he rights himself. The highlight of the film? Rorschach's escape from the apartment block. You're just rooting for him so, so, so much. Even those of us who know he's not going to make it.

Things to look out for? In the comic, Rorschach muses that Adrian is possibly homosexual (with a distinctly disapproving tone) - if you keep your eyes peeled when Dan checks the floppy disk, one of the folders on it is labelled "boys". That made me chuckle. IMDB claims the graphic novel suggests Rorschach is gay, but that strikes me as very unlikely considering the distaste he regards sex with full stop, and also a pointless line of investigation: can you imagine Rorschach with a date? No, thought not. Rorschach also uses a Vedit aerosol when breaking out of Moloch's house. In the prison break, someone uses a wilhelm scream when they are dropped off a balcony. Finally, when Laurie and Dan are at the Gunga Diner, you can see pink triangles on the wall - surely they're the Gay Women Against Rape posters from the comic?Interestingly, the

Aint it Cool review has virtually identical things to say to
me:http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40339And it's helped me to understand what was missing at the end. I am looking forward to

"Oh, and that when you go to see the movie this weekend, you won't be watching Jackie Earl Haley -- Jackie Earl Haley will be watching you."

And I've settled down to what I believe is the most jarring aspect of the Watchmen movie, it's not in the spoilerific section because it's of general interest. Me back on my personal hobbyhorse: Too. Violent.

There are three types of movie violence, broadly speaking.

There's Type 1 "gore" - not very realistic, completely excessive, and designed to produce a football-supporter-style "phwoar!!" reaction. Planet Terror, 300 and Street Fighter are perfect examples. You are meant to visibly wince, and after the film it's appropriate to go "ah, you remember the bit where the guy's head went into the wood-cutter? That was gross, ma$n!"

There's what we'll call Type 2 "kung-fu", although obviously it encompasses all sorts of fights - exciting, viceral, borderline video game, encompassing Star Wars, James Bond and The Matrix. This violence is meant to impress the skill of the fighters on you. Wounds tend to be shrugged off, as are natural reactions: you can be kicked six times in the gut and still be smiling in a Type 2 movie. And so can the audience.

And there's Type 3, "realistic". It's debateable whether Type 3 movies are meant to entertain or not - I believe that the vicarious enjoyment of cinema can be extended to very, very unpleasant scenarios as much as happy ones. But this third type sets out to disturb, not in a childish way like Type 1, but in a very real and horrible way.

And there are overlaps, of course - the jury is out on whether Reservoir Dogs is a type 3 "realistic" or a type 1 "gore". And I'll be interested if you can provide any films which don't fit into those three, random catagories I just plucked out of the blue, so I can refine my explanation.

It's all a problem of semantics, because I'd only actually call Type 3 violent. The most violent scene I've ever seen is in a PG. Our heroes have been kidnapped and lined up against a wall by Character A - except Character B, who's broken his leg, who is lying on a table next along. Character A wants information, but our heroes are naturally too hardass to say anything. So he saunters over the Character B, and just waits. Then he gently rolls the barrel of his gun up the broken leg - obviously intensely painful - and that's it. But it is _violence_ in it's purest form. No excitement, no blood. It's just such a threatening gesture.

Incidentally, The Departed is my favourite depiction of film violence of all time, because it is everything it can be, and I believe it expresses the experience better than any other film. It's thrilling, set to a pumping rock soundtrack - and I think there must be something of a thrill in real violence too, otherwise why would it happen, if it wasn't on some level fun? Yet it's also firmly type 3, because it's hard to watch. You want to join in, but you can't look. And every piece of violence in the film tumbles through this contradiction. It's very effective, and I like it a lot.

The point of this digression is to bitch about the violence in Watchmen. It's a nasty little book, and the world it's set in is just horrible. True, you're seeing it through the eyes of Rorschach who is undeniably paranoid, and regards humanity as crooked and flawed. I was cheered, then, that it was going to be an 18 because this film needs to be nasty.Bit of a disappointment, because the violence was defiantly Type 1. Cartoonish, bloody and totally OTT. Every time soemthing nasty happened, there was an audible wince from the audience. It jolted you out of the film because type 1 gore is dehumanising. J. said to me afterwards, the worst part was the knife going through the woman's leg.I replied that it wasn't that at all - it was the knife going through a leg, not the woman's leg. The fact it was her as opposed to anyone else was irrelevant.

Yes, it was unpleasant but Zack Snyder had never sat back and considered why he was using this violence, what was the purpose. Why, in a film otherwise so grounded in reality, was everything so luridly vicious? Why couldn't it have been a nasty 18, instead of just a splatterific one? From the bone-crunching way the fights were filmed, to the actual colour of the blood, there was something just wrong. Hyper-real, and wrong. It was this aspect, more than anything else (and the fact they cut out my favourite bit), which disappointed me.

Oscar rage!!!!!!!!!

Anyone who’s been on my blog before, anyone who’s actually had to go through watching it with me before, will know loathe the Oscars. Yet being a fan of movies, I can’t get away from them – and so I’m not going to be a grown up about this thing I hate, and ignore it. I’m going to be childish and bitch, at some length, at why it is the most trivial, smug and meaningless night of the year.


Fans of the concept, with happy naïve ideas that the winner is always the most deserving, should look away now.


Firstly – I don’t believe in it in principle, that you can judge five different films and pick a winner. Between five horror films, you can at least pick the best horror film – but between a romance, historical, drama, comedy and horror, how can you even begin? Out of Africa is a better romance than Saw was. Is it a better film? Not remotely! In this contest, Out of Africa is the best film involving lions, Africa and Meryl Streep, and Saw is the best movie about a leg on the floor. Sure, you can prefer one over the other – but I thought the Oscars were about the “best” movie, not a mere popularity contest?

Which it blatantly is – how can it not be? – yet it keeps up this façade of rewarding merit. Your vote is almost certainly going to go to the genre you prefer. I love buddy movies, and so I’d naturally enjoy a buddy movie more than a horror movie. Sit me down in front of The Sting and the Exorcist, and I’ll always pick the former, regardless of quality. Same goes for performances, same for music, for costumes.


An enterprise which involves this sort of arbritary voting is always going to be a bit crooked, but the Oscars almost turn it into a sport. Isn’t it funny how all five Best Picture nominees are English or American? Now, of course, this might just be because us superior Westerners make better films than anywhere else in the world – but any sane human can tell you that’s balls. A serious line up for this years best movie might involve one or two English language movies, but would also encompass the variety world cinema has to offer.

As soon as you notice there’s rarely a foreign film up for awards, except in a token way, you wonder who the show is for. It’s not like the Korean audience are going to go “ooooh, American films are better than Korean films because they win more Oscars”. No – the institution is designed by Hollywood as an exercise in back-patting and marketing, for the English-speaking audience. To the rest of the world, they’re meaningless. So why should it matter to us?


And the Oscar voters love sentiment. Real people. Real lives. Drama, angst – weighty topics. It’s favouritism, not merit. Is a story intrinsically better because it is deep and meaningful than fantastical and frothy? Not a jot! Yet as a body, their votes always reflect a love for Americana, social commentary and above all, a healthy dose of slush.

An example. Did Al Pacino win an Oscar for the Godfather, for the widely acknowledged best performance of all time? No. Except if you count the Oscar they gave him for the Godfather in 1993. He received it, supposedly, for Scent of a Woman – but it was Michael Corleone who went on stage to pick it up. Same thing happened with Martin Scorcese and his Oscar for Goodfellas, which he won a few years ago for Gangs of New York. Of course, Al was good in Scent, and the direction was good in Gangs. But that's not what it was about. It was about the sentiment. A friend blog, Hilarity Ensues, suggests Meryl Streep and Sean Penn get more nominations for being Streep and Penn than because they actually deserve it.

I admit, there's a personal vendetta here too - Titanic won because of the noise it made. Everyone was mad for it! Screaming, crying, fangirls. Again, it won because it was Titanic, for being groundbreaking, for causing such hysteria. Not because it was the best film of that year. Even among epic-tragic-romances-in-pretty-dresses, it's not well regarded. The punchline is the moment it beats L.A. Confidential, one of the most stunningly impressive films I've ever seen, to the best Oscar gong.

Now bear with me. One of these films had classy direction, four great central performances, a plot so gorgeously complex that even after five viewings I can't appreciate the detail, and a fantastic, subtle script, which only becomes more impressive when you see the laberynthine source material from which it was adapted. The other one...well, the other one's Titanic.

Certainly Titanic is very enjoyable, and if you're a fan of period slush you'll obviously love it more than my precious crime epic. You can't deny it does what it does - ludicrously romantic melodrama - very well, and I'm pretty fond of it in my own way. But on any just system you've got to admit that L.A. Confidential is a better crime epic than Titanic is a romance.

And that was the moment I lost faith in the Oscars. 7/10 movie critics will tell you I'm right. Empire and Total Film both think I'm right. The Imdb list things I'm right.

And Oscar history is packed with this - A Beautiful Mind beat Fellowship of the Ring, Chicago beat Two Towers. Look at the above lists. It's not just the Oscars, either - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead beat Goodfellas at Cannes, and see how many film buffs you can find who think that's fair! Here's a whole list: http://www.filmsite.org/worstoscars.html

The point of all this is, people rarely if ever win Oscars because they deserve it. If they do, well, that's nice as well. And if Greatest Director Of All Time Alfred Hitchcock lost all 5 of his nominations, then how can the list mean anything at all?


Which brings us around to Mr Ledger, the cause of the rant. You might recall me saying words to the effect of "the Joker was a fantastic role, certainly deserving an Oscar - but if he wins, he'll have won for being dead." And I stand by that.

You can say there's never been a superhero film like Dark Knight before (there hasn't, but wait until next week...); you can even say there's never been a peformance like that in a fantasy movie before. But the rule still stands - you don't get actors in fantasy! Actors make films, not movies! It's why Johnny Depp didn't win an Oscar for Pirates of the Carribean: World's End, Ian McKellen didn't get one for Fellowship of the Ring, though both were nominated. "But Johnny Depp and Ian McKellen weren't very good...", to which I say come off it. They never had a chance. Neither were playing schitzophrenic black lesbian single mothers in wheelchairs.

Fantasy movies - by which I mean dungeons, dragons, sci fi, superheroes et al - get Oscars for sound design and special effects. Period. Sometimes costume, music if they're lucky, maybe editing.

Return of the King, of course, won everything (see: sentimental voting, Al Pacino winning an Oscar on behalf of earlier achievements - the King Oscars were actually for the whole trilogy). It's the only Fantasy film to ever win a best film Oscar, unless you extend the definition to include Around the World in 80 Days or Wings. Same goes for directors - Return of the King is the only one. What about Blade Runner, I ask? What about 2001: A Space Odyssey?

A 1931 Best Actor Oscar was won for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, although that technically comes under mental illness. Someone managed to get Best Supporting Actor and Actress for Cocoon and Fisher King respectively, though both do have strong elements of real life in them. And without meticulously researching the content of every film I've never heard of, that's it for Oscars. Heath Ledger's achievement is even more impressive than previously thought.

I was surprised to find myself giving a spontaneous cry of joy at hearing he’d got it after all, instead of rolling my eyes as you might have expected from the rant above. Which just proves that we all get pretty sentimental at times, and I find myself wishing, if only for a moment, that the whole system was fair....

Adaptation...

...is felgercarb. I think I've got a handle on what it should be now; all the same, it's an impossible subject, and one currently much on my mind. As indeed is "felgercarb", a nice piece of swearing from original Battlestar Galactica. Oh how times have changed.

It is possible to make a perfectly true adaptation, but usually only of very slim books. Age of Innocence - still, believe it or not, my favourite Scorcese - is a word for word transfer. Even descriptive passages are lovingly transferred; even the scene where our hero imagines his love interest walking up behind him. Another one that comes to mind is Brideshead Revisited, the TV show. You'd be hard pressed to find a line missing from that adaptation (well, I can, but only because they had the misfortune to cut my favourite line...).

It's also a good 17 hours long, and herein lies the rub. Cuts have to be made. Books are not films, films are not books - it's part of the excitement. If you don't, then you end up with something like Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, nicknamed "the Eternity version" for good reason. And the film still managed to waltz off with a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, despite the fact he'd done nothing to the script but choose one Folio over another, and juggle the odd soliloquy.


I actually handle cuts with some equanimity. As a film student, I understand that a perfect copy of the book is rarely possible, nor even desirable - to an extent, if it's the same as the book, why not read the book? And as PJ justified, Frodo and Sam didn't not go to see Tom Bombadil, they just didn't show it on screen.

Changes are worse - for one thing, the author knew what they were doing. By changing small details, other facets of the story fall out of kilter, important themes fall by the wayside - it's the literary equivalent of going back in time and stepping on a butterfly. A personal example is Denethor in Return of the King. This isn't a subject I can speak fairly on - you see, he has always been my favourite character in the books. He's human and flawed, makes some bad decisions, is worn out and weak. But he's not evil - as far as I know, Tolkien never wrote Bad Guys. Saruman is given sympathy; and there are quotes pointing out that even Sauron was not born evil. The film does make him a bad guy - and like that, a whole layer of complexity is gone from the plot. It would have only taken two lines to give him some much-needed motivation. Stories are always better when all the characters are sympathetic.

Little things matter less. Does it matter that Gregory Peck plays New-Zealander Mallory as an American in Guns of Navarone? Or that David Niven plays American Dusty Miller as a Brit? Not really, because their characters are preserved. Apparently, the Cirque du Freak fandom is kicking up a fuss because a white girl has been cast as Debbie - again, this is far less henious a crime than, say, making her an ass-kicking Vampire babe, or giving her a terminal illness, or killing her off in a weird way.

For me, it's TONE that is the great killer. The Denethor complaint is a tonal one more than anything else - it kills the atmosphere in Gondor. A good example of this is L.A. Confidential, a terrific movie which I respect twice as much through having read the book. Which is significantly different, and about 6 times as complex. Characters are killed in different times and places, names are swopped, subplots dropped and switched. But it still FEELS like the movie of the book, because the tone is so close. The nastiness (nastier in the book, I'll add - it made me feel sick in a way that nothing has since), the corruption, the interweaving plots. Unless you'd been paying great attention to the book, and making notes, your synopsis would be identical to one of the film - something about three policemen, a vice ring, the Victory Motel, the Nite Owl, Piers Patchett, Lynn Bracken. Who has about three pages in the book, but they're memorable ones. The shootout at the Victory happens at the end, instead of the start - but who's counting? Because it's there.

Or maybe it's because all these are films I've loved first, which is why I take it well, as opposed to the Denethor case, which I take oh-so-personally.

Yet I have said, and with a single exception believe, that no story is unfilmable. There's always a way. I find it hard to imagine people thought Lord of the Rings was unfilmable - it's so cinematic! Look at The Message - a movie about the life of the prophet Mohammed...who isn't allowed to be depicted in art. What do they do? Never show him on screen, and when he and another character are speaking, the other character speaks to the Fourth Wall and falls silent "listening" to his reply. It's genius - crazy, but genius - and the film gets on with it so that you barely notice the daftness.

If you can get over a main character who's not allowed on screen, you can get away with anything. A lot of people are calling Watchmen unfilmable. They're wrong, and I hope Mr Snyder is going to prove them wrong in the new year. It too is so terribly cinematic - the comic borrows liberally from film techniques, particularly intercutting, but also flashbacks and the use of sound. A lot of the depth will have to go - but like Lord of the Rings, it never hurts to have more material than you need. Because you can feel in the film that Middle Earth is massive and ancient, because of those tiny references. Thus with Watchmen - I think you'll believe the world because those things are cut, but under the surface.

The single exception is Sandman. Terrific TV show, perhaps, but it'd make a lousy movie, mostly because there's no plot. or rather, lots of plots - Sandman is a twelve volume omnibus of the best fantasy short stories you've ever read, linked by the central character of Morphius, who's basically the god of sleep. The only way to do it justice would be dump it on a freewheeling first time director, who'd be able to capture the ambling from one thread to another.

A typical issue of Sandman will start with a little story about a man; that man will go to sleep and dream a story, and inside that story there are three characters who sit down and each tell an anecdote about their lives. Maybe an anecdote about storytelling. That's six plots, all equally vital and equally superfluous to juggle. Which is why it can't, and shouldn't be made, except as a Tales from the Crypt style weekly show, filming the longer and better ones. And as soon as you give it to the telly, the budget is unachieveable. Sandman is currently the sole exception to my rule.

What's got me on this?

For one thing, I've been reading Guns of Navarone, and enjoying it immensly. It's one of my very favourite films, and the book doesn't disappoint. As for the film, some cuts - the German patrol thinking Stevens/Franklin is their own missing guard, the boat which gets blown up in the movie searching them twice instead of once - most of which I can justify. Changes, very interesting changes - because the film is actually more complex, where changes are mostly made to simplify the book. For example, film folks will remember Greek tough-guy Andrea had sworn he was going to murder Mallory once the war was over. This element isn't in the book - they're just good buddies. And while Miller puts himself in charge of their injured teammember, Stevens is just a random extra. In the movie, the injured Franklin is also his longterm buddy, adding a layer of complexity and emotion. It's this deep relationship which causes all sorts of tensions and arguments later on, and is directly responsible for the movie's best three scenes. It'll be interesting to see if they're there at all, and how they'll play out in the book. Anna, the girl - I think I already spotted her in the cast, but in the book She is a He. And Jensen's role is cut down almost completely.

And then there is the sheer irritation factor of Miller being American - he's my favourite character in the film, because of his crumbling British stoicism, his wry British sarcasm, and the fact he's played by David Niven, who's so British he couldn't locate America on a map.

What muddies the issue further is that after the success of the film, Alaister McLean wrote Force 10 from Navarone as its sequel - which means characters which die in the first book, but survive the first film, are there in the second book. I want to go back to Force 10 now - which I read first - and see whether Miller is still an American...

I feel the film is a fair interpretation of the book so far. All the major events are there, and the tone is the same - exciting, tense, and heroic. And just bubbling underneath that, the insane mental and physical hardships of war. I'm just looking forward to seeing how they treat those three scenes...

And also because last night, we went to see Twilight. Against the odds, it wasn't "High School Musical with emos", as I'd feared - it was actually a pretty darn good movie. Especially when you compare it with rival movies for teen girls. This is what set me off - because the vampire novels of my childhood, Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan and its 11 sequels are coming to a cinema near you sooner than I'd like.

They're very special books - if for no other reason that I reread them last month, and they are still incredible:

• Reinterpretation of vampire legend gets full points. Everyone has their own blend - I'm writing three vampire stories at any one time, and they all conform to my rules. If Darren Shan's is the most gritty, it's also the most realistic. Not necessarily a recommendation - after all, I love Anne Rice's gothic aristocracy of the night as much as the next gal. This is a world where the police notice the civil war going on among the undead; where sun exposure can kill you after a while, but gives you the worst suntan in the world first (instead of blowing you up on sight, which is lousy, or making you look like David Bowie, which is worse); and the gamut of vampire powers is restrained by common sense. It must be said that the vampire stories I'm writing only conform to one of these...


• The characters deserve special mention, because I'm not sure exactly what it is or how he does it, but by the time they started getting killed, I really minded. Gavner! Arra! Mr Crepsley! Mr Tall! Kurda! Annie! Debbie! Steve! Lefty! Evra! The book is written from Darren's point of view, so while he's a character you like, it's not the same deep fondness as you aquire for the people around him.


• I've neglected to mention Mr Tiny, mostly because he's just too scary. Great character, but not as adorable. Incidentally, why haven't they cast Sylvester McCoy yet...?


• Aimed squarely at young teenagers, they never patronise and never shy away from being dark, even though the writing style occasionally reminds you you're no longer 8. Yet there are scenes which still upset me, shock me, make me wince and think.

I'm upset about the movie. Partly, it is true, because I wanted to make it. And it would be incredible. But as I said, it's all about TONE. This is a book for young adults, and they're going to pitch it at children. They'll *ahem* take out the fangs and the blood and grit, and neuter it completely. Which is a shame, because the world has no lack of sanitised kid-fare. To work, it needs to be the same level of intensity as the latest Harry Potter - but no studio is going to take a risk on making it a 12.

What's worse is that it will suck stylistically. My movie would look like the photos of my favourite artist, Eugenio Recuenco, filmed in the style of Night Watch, all deep contrast and dark, sticky blacks, with the occasional splash of intense colour. I adore the whole circus aesthetic, designing the Cirque would be terrific. As would Vampire Mountain. They've moved it from Europe to America - if anything, perhaps this is is better? Our heroes spend the time in anonymous towns and empty nowheres, and America still has a lot of those.

But they're just going to drown it in CGI, forgetting that Shan-pires aren't magical, romantic or supernatural - they're scarred, earthy, and basically just humans a tiny bit more dead. Not to mention that they'd never let me make their precious child-friendly movie with these images in mind. My use of CGI would be as limited as possible - as Guillermo del Toro has proved, you can get away with a suprising amount without it.

It can't all be bad. I do like the fact that they're compressing books 1-3 into one film - even though you could do, say, Tunnels of Blood as a seperate film, setting them all at the same time is much better. In book 1, Darren goes to a circus and as a result becomes a vampire - you can cover that in the first twenty minutes. You could very effectively set book 2 (Sam, the Cirque, R.V. and the Wolfman) and book 3 (Evra, Murlough and Debbie) at the same time, by parking the Cirque near the town where Murlough is.

More importantly, it sets up a good precedent for the rest of the series, which occurs in natural slim trilogies. Next up come the three at Vampire Mountain - I don't recall the details so clearly, but they could easily make one good movie; what I remember of the hunt for the Vampanize Lord also could do with some heavy trimming.

I would cast a different boy as Darren in every movie. He's going to have to stay looking young, so instead of having Actor A for three films, and replace him with Actor B just when things get intense, it would be an accepted fact of the series that it will always be someone new. Perhaps it's the Doctor Who in my system making me think that this is a Good Thing. Still, it'd make for some interesting comparisons across the series as a whole.

Most importantly in attaining a unique tone, I'd find a good composer. I do not want someone to think "Children's film - lets have strings and magical flutes!". In the book, vampire music is heavy slow drums. That'd be an interesting sound; or Dark Knight's Joker theme, or anything electronic and offbeat. As little music as we can get away with, and with a composer willing to experiment with sounds.

Enough of the movie I'm never going to make, and you're never going to see. What about the one we've got. Time for some internet research...

Just a conspiracy of cartographers...

I'm a big fan of absurdist drama - Waiting for Godot, about two men trapped in an endless cycle of waiting under a tree; Rosencrantz and Guldenstern are Dead, about two minor characters trying to work out what's going on, trapped again in the endlessly cycling plot of Hamlet; Six Characters in Search of an Author, again about characters who were abandoned by their author and take on a life of their own.

And hundreds more, Pinter and Satre and Camus - those just happen to be the three plays I'm fond of, mostly because they delve into meta-fiction - the idea that fiction isn't real. "No duh", you might be saying - but most films or books expect you to believe them for the duration of consuming them. Wheras characters in an absurdist drama can and do sit down and say "look, I'm not sure we're real..."

I find this fascinating. My line between fiction and reality has always been somewhat dodgy - I do believe that as soon as a story has been committed to paper, why shouldn't it be real? It's no less real than reading a story in the newspaper. You can say "yes, but the ones in the newspaper actually happened" - but you have no more proof, except the words on the page. And what is "actually happened" anyway? Your experience of the events is exaclty the same, if not more vivid, in a book. If you were to imagine that your [insert close person] had been run down by a tram, does the fact that they haven't make your feelings of sorrow any less real? You have the emotional experience - you can't throw it away and say it was nothing.

I'm going to borrow a line from someone else now, but it's a thought I had independantly too, he just puts it very well. If you ever cried at a film - E.T., Top Gun, Casablanca - while a "real life" tragedy has left you unmoved, then what the hell is the difference? Sure - you feel bad about the war/famine/disease/disaster, but in a distant, "bad things happen", nothing I can do to help way. You can't do anything to help E.T. either, mate. Because he's not real. So why are you reaching for kleenex?

With that in mind, and if you're not already calling men in nice shiny white suits to take me away, you can understand why I'd find metatheatre fascinating.


And so we come onto Knife in the Water, a film I positively loathed throughout for various reasons I'll discuss in a minute, until it got to the end and I realised what it was. Absurdist drama!

Look at the hallmarks - mundane, repetitive dialogue. Pointless plot. A location without time, personality, or recognisable features. We're pretty sure it's Poland, and at one point we know it's 5AM. But apart from that, it could be anywhere. And the time/place is meaningless anyway, as the characters are archetypes, one without a name. The Hiker comes and goes out of nowhere, as if he has spent his entire existance waiting by that roadside, and ceases to exist as soon as he gets off the boat. Imagine he's a ghost if you like, only there to spark off the situation. He's a walking plot device. When Andrzej swims off, he seems to disappear. Because they're characters who have no life outside the immediate story.

They do mention other people - the seamen, some parents, the man who could beat Andrzej at jacksticks. But the Hiker's backstory is conveyed only through Krystina's surmises, she has no backstory at all, and all we know about Andrzej is that he is successful, and there's an abstract "meeting" he needs to be at. We see no one else, and no proof of anyone else, in the film. Andrzej himself seems to be conscious of this - assuming the windscreen wipers won't be pinched. Who would steal them? Everyone in that world is on the boat. Which makes their later theft even more surreal.

Even if you don't agree with me, see at least that they are sailing through an empty world. Someone on IMDb suggested that they already knew each other, and I can see where they're coming from: they do seem to be aware of something out of the ordinary. I found the characterisation very uneven and bizzare, as if Andrzej knows he has to invite the guy aboard, even though there's no good reason for him to do so.

The film ends as it begins, preparing the boat, driving off, driving on the road, and you know nothing has changed. The Hiker will stay a daredevil showoff. The couple will stay married. It's my avowed opinion that the three of them are stuck together in this empty, foggy nowhere - emphasised most strongly by the final shot of the car paused at the crossroads. You just know they're going to be there forever. If they went looking for the police, can you imagine them actually finding them?

Even if you don't go as far as me, you can't deny it does have overlaps with the absurdist/existentialist genre. Certainly, looking at the story that way gives an added layer of interest to a film which really, I did not think much of.


It's only 90 minutes - that's shorter than Reservoir Dogs - but boy does it drag. They eat. They posture. They squabble, in a masculine way, about pretty much everything. Sure, it's minimalist, and I appreciate the mounting tension is meant to be gradually conveyed in looks and mundane lines. But something gets lost in translation, and perhaps the fact I knew what they were trying to do dulled its impact on me. It doesn't build and simmer, just comes and goes. Every time the titular knife was produced, it should have produced absolute terror. Maybe it does on other people. When it comes to the climax, it should be at a point where violence is unavoidable and the only solution. Actually, it seems arbritary, like someone is telling the characters that it's time to wrap the story up.



I can see it has merit, and I wish I could appreciate it - but it missed me on an emotional level entirely. Which is in itself a facet of absurdism, a deliberate distancing. I think it wants to be "psychologically taut" - for me, the technical term is actually "boring".


Krystina was by far the most interesting character, and that only when compared to the last fifteen minutes. Having been unimpressed with its attempts at raising tension, when things actually started happening it did get good. I loved the quiet way Krystina asserted her authority over both of them, after all the showing off; I loved Andrzej's guilt for something he hasn't done, and the fact his pride can't admit Krystina cheated. In my opinion, the film would have been better for getting here half an hour sooner.


It's very nice too look at, however. Polanski was trained as a photographer, and you can tell because the cinematography is just beautiful. You got a real sense of the heat, and the stillness, or the fog, or the rain. All was let down, however, by that godawful music. It must be said I'm not the words greatest fan of jazz, especially that noisy style, but every time it comes in it's loud and intrusive and makes me want to die. Again, I think the atonality is deliberate; it doesn't change the fact it doesn't work for me.



The question is, was it written as absurdist drama? Probably not. Mind you, there are plenty of people who are hot on the religious symbolism - most tellingly, the Hiker's crucifixion pose, the walking on water and the boat's name framed often so it merely says "Christ". A flawed theory, I think - because it's meaningless symbolism. The Hiker is not a Jesus figure, in no way (he carries a knife, no discussion needed), and what then does the imagery add to the movie? Roman Polanski has completely rejected that angle; and anyway, isn't he Jewish...?


..while TIME magazine describes it as a trip in a Freudian sloop; and I think you could make a lot of the Oedipal angle - the Hiker's poem is about his mother, and Krystina making sure he eats, tucking him in, drying his hair, is motherly behavior.


So why, then, should I not cling to my theory? It's the only way I can find to appreciate this movie...

I have the greatest respect for Sofia Coppola.

Ok, rephrase. As a gal who wants to break into direction, it's infuriating that the most successful femme director I can think of has a very famous daddy. Still, it's hard to deny that she's pretty great. I think the first half of The Virgin Suicides is one of the most terrific half-films I've seen since JFK (people keep interrupting me before I can get to the end).

So onto Marie Antoinette, which I respected but did not love. And I'm not sure why.

I don't mind the historical inaccuracies, for example. I liked the stunt casting, the mix of accents and use of modern music. I liked the portrayal of a historical figure as a modern party girl - it made for an interestingly incongruous contrast. It's always nice to see The Past presented as fun, instead of a dry and dusty period drama. I admired the way in which only tiny bits of life outside Versailles filtered through. Because when you study the period, you do get the impression that actually the King was given no idea how bad things really were in France. The plot was not even style over substance - style was the substance. Which I tend to admire in films. You can make trivial, substanceless films which nevertheless do seem to be packed with meaning and depth - Velvet Goldmine is one of them. Events of massive importance are completly downplayed; while time is lavished over balls or the sequence at her house. I like this too. And of course, it was delicious to look at and wonderfully directed.

Yet with all possible criticisms rebutted, and being willing to defend all the dodgy choices she made, I was nevertheless left cold. It was like looking at someone else's Facebook photos - must have been fun; I still wasn't there at the time though...I felt there was something deliberately distancing in the casting of Kirsten Dunst, Rip Torn and Steve Coogan. I simply didn't care. Lost in Translation did this to me too - at the time, I assumed it was because I was feeling homesick, fed up and jetlagged (i was watching it on a plane) and didn't appreciate having those feelings duplicated. Having mentioned it above, I felt that this should have been Velvet Goldmine in wigs. It wasn't.

But what the hell! Just stick it on and drown in the preeety dresses, and looovely buildings, and fantastic direction. No one can beat Sofia Coppola for the pastoral stuff - pay attention whenever the characters are allowed outside. I loved the scene with the sunrise. But maybe that's just because I like sunrises...

I hate misleading trails...

It appears that honest trading standards do not apply to the movie business. Hey, let's put the words QUENTIN TARANTINO in big letters in both the Hero and Hostel trailers, even though he's just the producer! Let's cut together the Spy Game trailer from a single five minute sequence in the movie, to make it look like a slick action movie! Instead of a meditative talky thriller. Let's trail Solaris - as a love story! Instead of a slow paced I-don't-know-what.

I'm sure you've all got your favourite example of misleading movie trails. Sometimes you've just got to be prepared for disappointment. And so we come on to the tantalisingly named movie Changeling, which has already got my fantasty-fan juices boiling. The tagline, too small to read on that poster, is "To find her son she did what no one else dared".




That had better be pass through the labirynth of eternal darkness, find the three Keys to the three Gates of Dawn and finally challenge the Knight Mare guarding the Tower of Silence with a sword of pure Ebonyte, or else I'm going to be pretty damned disappointed...

Masala!

Back from film studies screening, at a godawful hour of the evening, and with nobody but you lovely people to sqoon at!

Say you've just, I don't know, spent an hour arguing about what film to watch, and you've narrowed down to a choice of four:

• a knockabout buddy comedy about two criminals on the run
• An all-singing romantic musical
• A serious drama about a great man restoring his dignity after terrible tragedy
• An exciting action-adventure thriller, complete with explosions, chases and train heists

Oh to live in India when the inevitable TV argument breaks out! Sholay does all four of these, and crucially, does them well. I did laugh. I did cry. I did feel stirred, and excited.

According to our lecture, it's known as the "masala principle" - yes, like the meal, which refers to the mixture of spices. Apparently, it's a deliberate ideal of Indian cinema - and one I rather like - to put the audience through the whole gamut of emotion, instead of just focusing on one. We (or at any rate, I) tend to be suprised by cross-genre works - the romance in Rear Window; the thriller in Casablanca. Horror films should be scary, dramas serious. There are no such genres in Hindi cinema - because in general, films are nowhere near that limited.

No wonder they're so popular - during the slapstick bits, I was thinking "Ooooh, Friend 5 will like this!"; and then later, during some of the actiony sequences, I wondered if I should get a copy of Friend 3 for Christmas. When we got into Wild West territory, I wondered whether dad had ever stuck this on while doing something else over a long afternoon. And, of course, if you asked me what the film was about, I'd say "buddy movie" straight off. It even has a coin that keeps coming down heads!

To fit all that in, it's no wonder this epic ran to something like 3 hours - which most of the Film Studies seemed to resent, if the applause and hasty exodus at the end were anything to go by. Lucky for them, then, that the Indian Censor's board actually trimmed it by 16 minutes. I enjoyed every darn minute of it - I feel films should be long. Two years back, I tried being obsessed with Reservoir Dogs, and even though I made a pretty good try, there really wasn't enough there. It's only 96 minutes, and they're a pretty thin 96 at that, and it soon comes to a rather poor choice between writing fanfiction or just rewatching the movie again. Compare to, say, Lord of the Rings - three films, and if that's not enough, some 8 books, not to mention all the scholarship and nerdery those 8 can generate. But there is a point where that runs out too - maybe that's why I've got into Doctor Who in such a big way? Because there are hundreds of episodes - the total running time beats most director's whole careers. And even more books. And an ever expanding series of audio plays. And graphic novels. And then there's the spinoffs. At this point, it doesn't look like I'll reach the end of all that for quite a while.

Which might explain why my regard for Sholay is so high - it's long enough that you can't take it in in one sitting, making it presumably rewatchable. And as it's so cross-generic (is that a real term?), it'll match any mood. You can just sit down and get lost in it. I remember at the time of my Godfather patch, complaining something of this sort: that seeing a film is OK, until it's over - at which point you want to know more, see more, experience more of the backstory and little details, know what's in the rooms the characters don't enter and generally immerse yourself in the world. Being a fan of a long running TV show with myriad cashins and spinoffs appears to come closer to this ideal than any film ever has.

There is another reason I liked it. Perhaps it was deliberate, so as not to isolate us daft Westerners entirely, but I thought it was a bizzare pick to demonstrate Hindi cinema because it borrowed so liberally from American genres. At times it plays like a greatest hits of all the westerns you've ever seen, starting act one, scene one "pan down onto a train arriving at a dusty station". Once they get the "Butch Cassidy with subtitles" bit out of the way, they're straight onto Seven Samuri, protecting a small village from evil bandits, with a bit of Dollars More-style vengeance on the side, and thats even before you get to the 8 minute shot for shot tribute to Once Upon a Time in the West. The use of sound is completely Sergio Leone (the chilling sound of the swing), and there are certain bits of music you'd swore were ripped from Morricone too. Particularly, the whistling (Cheyenne's theme, anyone?), the harmonica (duh...) and that harsh, screaming atonal tune they whipped out for the confrontation at the end.

Now there's nothing wrong, in principle at least, with ripping off other movies. I wrote a western script soon after I'd seen Once Upon a Time in the West, though it owed more to L.A. Confidential now I look at it again; I also wrote a script for a very Coens-y "crime out of control" caper in my Reservoir Dogs patch, and of course, remade Fellowship of the Ring. But none of these - no, not even the remake - were as blatant as a particular patch in the middle of a flashback.

Other than that, I didn't particularly mind. Sergio Leone pinched as much as he was pinched from, and it was a very good "uber-western" if you can stop yourself labelling the influences. It's just...even though Sholay's take on that scene was easily as effective, as scary, as upsetting, it still struck me as something too brilliant and iconic to nab. Especially because the moment the family at the happy homestead showed up on screen, I thought "now I know what's on the way..." QT had the right idea. Pinch the plot of City on Fire - a movie no one's ever heard of - remake it better, and maybe you can get away with it. Although Sholay's influences are very clear indeed, it's crucial to add they match the films they emulate. It's no better, or worse, or even different to any of the movies namechecked above. As such, it's a definite recommend for fans of the genre.

It's such a sixties film too - granted, it was made in the 70s. The Butch Cassidy nod wasn't just for a buddy movie with bicycles: the whole style and use of the camera at times reminded me too.

It's got all the normal stuff too, like great performances (particularly liked Singh) and very exciting direction. Rajha was impossibly serene, but at least she was nice to look at. Which was pretty much her role in the plot, as far as I could tell. The train heist was great, as was the Basanti's dance at a pivotal moment. Now, that felt like proper Hindi cinema - a gorgeous blend of the Western setting and uniquely Eastern song'n'dance, wrapped up in a sort of concept which wouldn't be out of place in myth - the woman who dances to save her lover (Beren and Luthien before Morgoth, much?). According to our lecturer, most Bollywood movies can be derived from a mythic source - which was a strange thing to say, because I believe that is true of all fiction (i.e. whether you're a Christian or not, the idea of a hero who seems to die, then returns, or the concept of self sacrifice for the good of many are very strong in our culture, literature and movies. And I don't just mean Narnia. Doctor Who, for one, and that's one of the most athiest shows going. Well, maybe humanist - you certainly can't accuse it of a religious agenda)

The other thing I disagreed with our lecturer on was his dismissal of the term "Bollywood". He took it as a suggestion that Hindi cinema is a mere imitation of Hollywood, whereas I have always understood it to suggest an equal status. British, French, Russian, Chinese cinemas don't get their own -ollywood after all, and the Brits in particular are guilty of imitating American films. And especially before showing us a movie which, far from exemplefying the uniqueness of Indian culture, actually clings to an established American genre for its lifeblood. He also suggested there was some colonial sneering in the fact we still call "Bombay movies" B-ollywood, instead of using Mumbai, but personally that's just because I reckon Mollywood would sound daft.

Anyway, I'm still in that "new favourite film" sort of glow, which usually washes off in a few hours. Hope it does, for your sakes, otherwise I'll be making you watch it at Christmas...



There are a few other things worth saying about our Film Studies lectures in general. The first is the demonstration of the maxim "all power corrupts" - our lecturer must have been silently annoyed, like the dripping of a tap, by all those little cinema gripes. Now he's in charge of his own screening, he's elected himself king of his own little kingdom. Not that I mind - mobiles off, food away, all things I agree with. I am also endeared to him by the fact he insists on us sitting through the credits. I hate nothing more than people switching off the DVD halfway through the playout theme. Not counting, y'know, genocide and poverty. The mood just vanishes from the room instantly, but keeping the music keeps the atmosphere and gives you a chance to process your response. Two notable examples are Blade Runner, where I need that dark pulsing Vangelis to deal with the unicorn, and Reservoir Dogs, where the chuckling smirk of instantly "Lime and the Coconut" gives the audience a release for the tension, and provides a great contrast. As if to say to those of us, with tears standing in our eyes and stomachs crunched from sympathetic wincing, "Hey, folks? It's only a movie..."

The other thing is his insistance on using genuine 35mm film instead of, say, projecting a DVD. I think it's just something that only a film buff could understand. DVDs are clean and clear quality - watching real film is akin to the Grindhouse experience. Scratches all over the place, the sound dipping in and out, or vanishing entirely; bits of the image getting lost, or going interesting colours; hearing the reel scratch and seeing the bright flash of colour when it's changed. In Sholay's case, truly inadequate and hard to read subtitles. In terms of immersive hi-def experience, it's easy to count the disadvantages. But I think it's something we all instinctively understand, that watching it on "proper film" is part of the magic, which a DVD can never touch; like a proper music buff refuses abandon LPs.