Victim (1961)

All sorts of reasons, but chiefly due to my interest in censorship and classification: it was the first English language film to use the word "homosexual" and it was banned in America for a year. It's an exercise in soapbox noir - one of the many 1960s films taking advantage of greater social freedoms and less restrictive censorship. Our hero - think Atticus Finch as played by Gary Cooper - is attempting to bring down blackmailers who were responsible for the death of his sort-of-boyfriend. Along the way, he meets an ever growing number of other closeted fellows being blackmailed, while all the time the noose gets tighter around his own neck.

Before the film could be made, the BBFC went through the script and removed four lines - including our hero's tame-but-still-shocking admission that he "wanted" a particular young man. Three of them later snuck back in. The internet claims the film is part of the reason public opinion changed, and parliament got moving on changing the laws which still threw people in jail - things finally got straightened out in 1967.

It's sympathies are loudly announced very early on: "Victim", of all names. Normally, that's the type of thing I couldn't stomach - and there are one or two points where characters as good as turn to the camera and present a charity appeal - but it's redeemed by being brilliant, heartbreaking and featuring the ever yummy Dirk Bogarde as an Englishman in distress. The heroism on screen is matched by the heroism of the actors and production team, for creating a potentially career-ruining piece of cinema - the list of people who turned down roles is long and legendary.

Despite its significance as a gay movie, it is perhaps most interesting for the ways it is, to modern audiences, repressed and representative of a different era. It's made very clear that Dirk Bogarde is "one of the good ones". He is linked with two men in the movie, but both are from the past: we never see him interact with them on screen. And lest our imaginations run away from us, we are also told he was as pure as ice and chaste as snow with both of them, breaking off both relationships to save himself from temptation. This would be regarded as rather a mixed message nowadays, but in context makes sense: why risk alienating your audience? Prof Dyer, who taught me last year, suggests "Victim" also refers to the gay underground as "victims" not only of blackmail, but also of their biology - and indeed, the film does reinforce the idea that the poor devils just can't help it. The idea of it being a valid lifestyle choice is a very long way off. Much of the action tellingly takes place in the West End, and I think the presentation of the Mrs deserves study. I also wonder what audience reactions at the time were like.

Enough on the background, what of the film? Heartbreaking. Soul destroyingly, life crushingly heartbreaking. And an awful lot of fun. Comes recommended.


In other news: Why have I only just heard about "The Sea Wolves"? Surely, if someone was filming Guns of Navarone - Wild Geese crossover flicks, I should have been informed?

I love it when a plan comes together!

Then:

http://www.grudge-match.com/Images/A-Team.jpg

Now:

http://media2.slashfilm.com/slashfilm/images/ATEAM_REV_01_10-10-09.jpg

I love the new image - just close enough, yet at the same time updated. With the addition of Mr Copley to the cast, my hopes are now fairly high for this big screen remake. I know nothing of Mr Rampage, but 3/4 aren't bad.

I am concerned they are going to make it more serious - I like the TV show silly. It's my break from serious and heartbreaking drama. But hell - I'm never gonna argue with a men on a mission movie, whatever the tone. Roll on!

Another bad memory

I treated a friend to High Plains Drifter last night. She's a big fan of Nick Cave, and "Red Right Hand" has always reminded me of this film. It had occured to me that, as an activist, she would be a bit put out by the rape scene which casually shows up five minutes in, but it bothered her so much that it set me musing. I don't think she's going to get on with my arch-favourite genre in the long run.

Because as I attempted to defend the film, it occured to me that I can't think of a single rape-free western. Once Upon a Time in the West, For a Few Dollars More, Ballad of Cable Hogue, Sholay - even Paint your Wagon and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Unforgiven passes, but then it does cut a hooker to ribbons in scene one; Open Range also passes, but it's interminable so you still wouldn't want to watch it. Rio Bravo, I think, is OK. I don't recall anything in 3:10 to Yuma - but the threat is definitely there. Maybe Blazing Saddles.

But certainly violence against women is ever-pervasive in the genre. Why is it there? The Western works in tropes more than perhaps any other genre. All movies have their cliches - fat cops with donuts,the hardnosed detective with a drink addiction and rubber duck, the passionate journalist who just can't hold down a relationship. But these things are all modern - the writer can, if he likes, meet some journalists, detectives or cops and learn about the genuine professions. He can't meet a cowboy.

And while he could do some research - well, it's not like writing about the Infanta, or the Wars of the Roses. It's the Tarantino school of movie writing - the Western exists mostly through fiction. Very much like the way Jack the Ripper has come to stand for whole styles and ideas, despite the fact he was once a rather desperate human being in need of serious help.

The Wild West heroes are America's Arthurian knights - mythic and archetypal. Even revisionist westerns play against the idealised rendition. You know who they are: the lanky coffinmaker who can measure up a body as soon as it rides into town; the lone gunfighter; the profit-driven cowboss/ mining director/ railroad magnate; the honest homesteader; the whiskery beer-sot who periodically spits in the dust. Oh, and the sherrif. I'm sure essays have been written about how this represents aspects of the American psyche. And then for the girls, unsurprisingly enough, there are Madonnas and Whores: dumpy schoolmistresses or vicar's wives, and dancing girls, waitresses and hookers with a heart of gold.

It is a harsh and horrible world, westerns want to tell us, populated by fallen people of both genders. Rape is a mode of interaction justified by the setting and the style - because without exception, the world of the western is a very violent one. Shootings, floggings, abandonment in the desert without water, being dragged behind horses, hung, beaten to death with bricks, blown up, dropped down mine shafts, being fed to ants and live burial happen all the time - so does theft, extortion and crimes of all colours. So should we really be surprised that violence gets directed at women as well? Calypso herself admitted that her distaste was hypocritical, considering Clint had gunned down a room of fellows minutes earlier. And part of me wanted to say, "this movie has someone stabbed through the neck with a sharp stick then left to suffocate as blood gurgles up through his throat", but at the same time I do understand exactly what she meant - one was worse than the other. Maybe it's like why "positive discrimination" against whites is justifiable (sort of) because they are not a marginalised group - in other words, violence against women does seem worse because it's still horribly pervasive in the modern world and needs to be treated as sensitively as any other form of movie-hate.

Or maybe it doesn't bother me as much, becuase it's written into my book of wild west expectations? Because it's also a trope - like the Rush To The Airport or Climactic Gunfight.
Calypso expects westerns to feature fellows getting shot, but would be surprised if killer crabs demolished the one-horse-town in the second reel, or our hero suddenly developed superpowers. Because I have watched a lot of westerns, my definition of the genre is wider and more complex, so casual rape is something I do half expect of the genre.

Sergio Leone said "The west was made by violent, uncomplicated men", and the western is a violent, uncomplicated genre. The location is out in the wild, and as such is liberated from the ethics, the hypocritical etiquette and mores of civilised Victorian life. There is a focus on the natural world - sweeping mountains, deserts - suggesting humans who have gone "back to nature" - and as such, all the characters are operating on primal urges. Thus the fellows are all manly macho men - hard drinkers who live to shag and shoot. I can only name you a single Western in which the hero chooses to drink milk.

Maybe this is at the root of problem of depicting women. Something like the Ents and the Entwives. In The Two Towers, Treebeard explains that the Ents liked to wander the wilds, while the Entwives liked to stay in one place, to garden and to tame the wilderness. They fell out because the Entwives wanted to civilise while the Ents wished to roam free. And thus: the message of western seems to be that actually, men fare better like this - whether it be the romanticism of Johns Wayne and Ford or the loners at one with the land who populate Sergio Leone's output. The minority of male characters in a western will be dressed in ties and starched colllars - most will be dressed down, whether honest farmers or good fer'nothings. Whereas women wear proper Victorian dresses - wondering where Wild West women get their immaculate hairdos is the oldest joke in the film studies department.

So it's the same dichotomy of the Ents - while the Men are relishing this return to nature, Leone's "simplicity", Women want to civilise the West and make it more like home. Women are resisiting their location, while Men are fitting into it. Optimistic old-school Westerns paint a romantic image of a simpler, better age, when men were men, where you knew where you stood and so on. Pessimistic Westerns are more likely to tell you that this is the true face of humanity - but in both cases, Man is right in accepting this natural state. You don't get many westerns which end with the hero deciding it's not for him and that he'll return to the big city. Interesting dichotomy here too - many westerns are about progress, but the message seems to be one that simpler is best.

There's an inherent criticism, then, in the behavior of women in Westerns - all of whom are in denial about embracing the natural world. I seem to have accidentally argued around the other thing Calypso really objected to, and I do not suggest for a moment that she's wrong in objecting. It was the way the women, after some token resistance, melted onto Clint Eastwood. Because they "secretly wanted it". At the time I said "well it's Clint Eastwood for goodness sakes", but now I've had it out on paper I think I get it. Wild West Men are simple and honest, and as discussed above, have embraced their primal urges - want woman, have woman, have woman now. Wild West Women are rarely shown in this fashion. They are civilised, but the West is not. They are proud and cling onto their notions of dignity and society which Wild West Men know have no meaning "out here". So maybe the inference is that there is a primal Wild West Woman inside each of them, but one they are supressing under their manners and neat appearance. Or, indeed, in the context of his genre they do indeed secretly want it. Which yes, I would also find very objectionable - outside of my beloved westerns. Which just goes to show that academia can justify anything.

There's an essay in here somewhere. And I'm not sure it's as cleancut as all of this. The thing I hate most about academia is the way it has less and less relevance to the subject under discussion. Like the way, in spy movies, spies stop trying to beat the enemy and concentrate on beating the enemy spies instead. While this theory is a nice framework to watch and understand Westerns through, lets be clear about the intents of the filmmakers. Fairly sure, in many cases, the historical setting and genre precedents are justification to show something unpleasant - which we are secretly meant to enjoy watching.

And I think I will enjoy westerns less for having it. I don't mind it at all on a film-by-film basis, because all I can think of have a good in-world justifications aside from my highfalutin' ideas about humanity and violence expressed above. So, Butch Cassidy is parodying the trope. High Plains Drifter is about a man who intends to let a small town destroy itself, and what he does in the first ten minutes sets up ripples that influence the course of the film. Once Upon a Time in the West doesn't really have an excuse for everyone treating Jill like shit - but makes up for by making her a very strong woman, maybe one of my favourite film heroines. Incidentally, have you ever thought about the tagline to that film:

"There were three men in her life. One to take her, one to love her, and one to kill her."

Quite aside from the essay inherent in a tag which defines the female protagonist through the actions of the male characters, have you ever worked out which character is which?

Anyway. Tell me what you think.

World Cinema: week 1

Welcome back! This semester I'm studying World Cinema and I'll be keeping you updated as I study - partly as revision, partly as rant-space, and partly as an excuse to blog.

This week we watched Pather Panchali, and discussed exactly what World Cinema was. Obviously it's a huge catagory, and one bound up with all sorts of politics. How useful is such a term, when it encompasses EVERYTHING ELSE outside of "normal" cinema - which is assumed to be from the West and in English. Does it include Europe? Britain? Or is it merely the "Third World" countries, places with crappy economies, in which case is there any way this is a topic you can discuss politely and without giving offence? It's precicely these touchy grounds regarding nationhood, race and all the rest which made me want to take this course.

I'm reminded of a quote I heard pre-Live 8. There was controversy because of the lack of black prescence on stage - so they also held "Africa Calling" on the same day, featuring African artists at the Eden Project. A comedian commented:

"We've organised a party for Africa but forgotten to invite any Africans. It's OK - they can come along, but can they stay in the greenhouse?"

That's key to my understanding of World Cinema. Along with World Literature or World Music, it's a rather limiting pigeonhole seen from a Western perspective. For example, India has had the largest film industry since the 70s - producing 1,000 movies a year. The first Japanese film to escape from Japan was in 1934, despite having produced films for 20 years before that. True national cinema didn't start to emerge until after the war, with 1948 being the first year of the Best Foreign Language Oscar. All this remained rather eletist until the 70s and the rise of the Film Festival, when World Cinema became very prominant. In the 90s, a vote was taken for the most important directors of our time - the two winners were from Taiwan and Iran. In which may become a running theme, I couldn't get their names down fast enough. A good, short history of trends in World Cinema can be found here.

So it's a ludicrous term when you think of it, and maybe that's why I'm gonna spend the next eight weeks attempting to define it.


My chief association for World Cinema encompasses non-mainstream. When Oceanic's German pen friends came over, I was looking forward to having a good natter about German cinema - and was disappointed to discover I'd seen more German films than they had. When I reflected on this, I considered that most Brits don't watch British cinema either - we are far more likely to be exposed to films from America, or made with an American co-production. British National Cinema - Billy Liar, Alfie, This is England - is far more the preserve of the film literate than the general public. For this reason, I now think of indie British movies as World Cinema, exposing a view of what "normal cinema" is as not just Western-centric, but Hollywood-centric.

This is especially interesting when compared to Pather Panchali - one of the Great Masterpieces of Indian Cinema by Great Director Satyajit Ray. But the film is in Bengali, a language spoken by only 5% of the population, and had little relevance to regular Indian cinemagoers. The popular cinema of India is, as you know, "Bollywood", which is produced in Urdu, Tamil or Hindi. The film ran for seven weeks in India - in the US, it ran for eight months.

One of the qualities of World Cinema picked out was how this seemed more "real" than Sholay -
and indeed the film was criticised within India for it's depiction of poverty, but again this is something I associate far more with independant/arthouse cinema. Mainstream cinema self-censors - it's not reality, it's the common consensus sold back to us. Pick any marginalised group and you know their depiction will be lacking. Look at the lack of interesting female characters, the Bechdel Wallace test, all the roles as sex object or token girlfriend, the absence of protagonists who are just female and get on with it. We're a long way from screaming and falling over, but the principle remains the same: woman, as represented by film, bears little relation to woman in real life. There's another overlap with social realism - it has always had a mission to faithfully represent the under-represented.

And one of the things I criticised the genre for last year was the way it purports to be life, and yet is no less fake. The documentary style pre-conditions us to accept what we see as truth - people commented on the tottery "auntie", and how she seemed to be not acting but real. But it is a constructed a version of India - as I mentioned above, in a language only 5% of the population speak, depicting a single lifestyle. It isn't, and doesn't attempt to be, representative. Yet it's taken as realistic compared to, say, Sholay - merely because the second seems fake.

Does world cinema have a duty to represent itself? I'm reminded of the French brothers who made Le Fils and L'Enfant, who always shoot with a sense of community - portraying a very specific group of people, despite the universality of their themes. Yet I'm not sure any film can escape representation. A spy thriller from Japan will share common themes with one from America, but even without trying, the Japanese will make a film about their conception of spying, and so will the Americans, and something gets represented all the same. Even High School Musical successfuly depicts the experience of being in an American high school - contrast it with The History Boys, The Wave and Battle Royale. At the same time, I don't think any film could be completely representative of a country - I'll be interested to hear any suggestions you might have to the contrary. Of course, "all art is quite useless" - I would have high disdain for any film that set out to be didactic first and fiction, or at any rate cinema, second.

Perhaps part of the appeal in World Cinema is this representation - appreciation of things strange and exotic. We can't help but view foreign cinema as foreigners. An obvious statement, but nevertheless a true one. We enjoy universal human emotions (love, hate and the rest), while also experiencing the strange - whether that be mannerisms, customs or merely costume and appearance. Pather Panchali, for example, is a detailed depiction in the life of an ordinary family. In other words, it's social realism - everything from the style to the subject matter screams it. A genre I detest with a firey passion. I understand it is well made and Important - with my brain but not my heart. Where is the fun in watching real life? I get enough of that when not at the movies. Truffaut, rather spitefully, commented on Pather Panchali that "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." And while that's a mean and small minded view to take towards anything, if he had applied it to British realism and said "I don't want to see a movie of Cockney housewives cooking chips" I might have more sympathy.

So on some level I was appreciating it as a documentary, because as mentioned above, it seemed "real". And yet the exotic depiction of life also appealed to me - little things like keeping money wrapped in a sari, and yes Truffaut, eating rice with their hands. Had it been made in Britain - and the tropes are the same, from the struggling housewife to the layabout father - I'd have found it interminable.

There is maybe something a little patronising in this connection to European realism. From the 50s-70s, Ray was Indian cinema for cine-snobs in the West. This was nothing unusual for that time - most countries outside Hollywood were filtered through one or two directors - and arguably it is still done today (China? Crouching Tiger. Japan? Anime. Brazil? City of God e.t.c...). Ray learnt filmmaking from Jean Renoir (France), he adored The Bicycle Thieves (Italy), and his greatest influence was a year spent watching movies in London. Obviously globalisation means nothing grows in a vaccum, but what Europe praised coming out of India was a cinema that Europe had invented. It took far longer for the all-singing, all-dancing, and totally unique Indian cinema to be appreicated.

(Or is this just my Western perspective? As someone used to British Social Realism, I am boxing it as such, but missing all sorts of layers and influences which an Indian audience would understand? Tricky tricky.)

Again, this makes sense in context. 30 years ago, all academics wanted to talk about were auteurs - arty, irrelevant movies. Recently, there has been a rise in "genre studies" - in other words, studying films that normal people watch. So the move from Ray to accepting "Bollywood" matches a global trend.

But there is a danger here with foreign cinema - because what is foreign anyway in this day and age? Tarantino can make Kill Bill, and Edgar Wright Hot Fuzz, even though the obvious properties would identify one as "Japanese" and the other "American". Do we enjoy the World Cinema we do precicely because appeals to the West? Either accidentally, or consciously made for export?

So, back to my first definition - it's not a place but a state of mind. It's not necessarily about where the producers come from, but the underlying ideology and the snobs who consume it.

Si-len-ci-o...!

Until 9 o'clock last night, David Lynch was my Favourite Director Whose Films I
Haven't Actually Seen. He'd inherited the title from Werner Herzog, and Quentin Tarantino before him, and I'm curious to see who comes along next.

Because last night, we watched Mullholland Drive - the closest thing there is to a dream on screen, and marvellous exercise in "Ghost Light" cinema. Ghost Light being an episode of Doctor Who, its incomprehensibility on par with it's beauty.

I have the same feeling for it's mysteries as I do for Blade Runner. The director has made a film with an ambiguity, and thus you are meant to appreciate the ambiguity. If he had meant it to be solved, he would have solved it. As it stands, I think the director means to give us headaches, no more, and is having on with the promise that it "makes sense". He generously gives us ten "clues" in the DVD case, such as "Where is Aunt Ruth" and "notice appearances of the red lampshade", to muddy the issue further. I don't think there needs to be an explanation - to be beautiful and enigmatic is enough. It makes sense on a thematic, sensory level - if not on a logical one.

If I had to pitch for a theory, I'd say parallel realities that are in a constant loop. The blue box represents shifting from one reality to another, and these events have been played out again and again. Turning the key resets the world, and shifts you to the other one. A bit Sliding Doors, and a bit Run Lola Run, and a bit like Donnie Darko in the way the two realities bleed into one another. It reminds me of a story, but I haven't put my finger on which yet. I'd also say the most important clue on the list is number five - "who gives a key, and why?" - but don't bother your head with the "can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?" , because I knew from the start they wouldn't mention it once. I'm also intrigued by the Adam-Cowboy subplot, partly because it does seem to have something solvable about it. The Cowboy says, if he chooses Camilla, he will see him once more - if he doesn't, he will see him twice. Adam sees Betty across the room at casting and is obviously fascinated, and if Betty had auditioned then he would have picked her. Instead, she runs - he casts Camilla - and you do see the Cowboy once more, in the second reality, where he has physically picked Camilla over Betty.

I was reminded of it when Calypso read me one of Freud's nuttier essays for a laugh. To him, the box represents the female, and also represents death, and in turn, leads to the two fundamental parts of life - the necessity of death and the choice of love. Which is all fruitcakes, especially in the context he was describing it, but it reminded me of the film in several ways. Cinematically, the portmanteau tale reminded me of the Coen brothers at times. It was also a clear precursor to Donnie Darko - not so much the weirdness as the similar soundscape. Oh, the sound! I've never seen a movie with such marvellous sound design before. Very beautiful and strange. As was the sense of dreamlike timelessness - somewhat like Tarantino: he makes modern movies, but with such a retro feel that I am always shocked when characters pull out a mobile or ipod a la Death Proof. Betty is going for a consciuous Grace Kelly thing, but Rita is almost vampiric - as if she had walked straight out of a black and white movie, and had yet to regain all her colour. Her look is just so classical, and creepy.

I'm intrigued by the total control he has over his actors. Total. One of the reasons I'm not always enchanted with film is the concept of control. So, in a book you have total control over every aspect except your audience's imagination - in a comic, you can determine what things look like but have less control over, say, internal monologue or describing the way people speak. In films, you can't determine exactly the look of your actors, nor their performance - actually, they may take your meaning and twist it utterly. David Lynch has them like puppets on strings - a lot of the expressions and manners of speaking, to me at least, seem to come straight from his imagination. I can't define it. It's wonderful.

I want to write an essay about how watching cinema changes you physically. The way people change when watching violence, sex or something scary or romantic. For example, I heat up when watching something scary, and when I am really, really enjoying a film, I discover my breathing rate tends to slow -which is something that did happen while watching. Calypso is a fine person to watch cinema with - she instinctively understands that a movie should be 90% total silence, and 10% movie trivia. Contrary to what you might expect, if nothing pressing is going on, I don't mind interruptions to point out that character X is being played by the director's estate agent, or shot Y is a tribute to an obscure film no one has actually seen. Of course, this percentage changes depending on the nature of the film, but I was intrigued to discover it started life as a TV show. Might explain where all the exposition went.

As it was, it is brief and self contained. Mysterious. Beautiful. Silencio!

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....