Cabin Fever: Horror film of the Sam Raimi school, i.e., "put a bunch of really unlikeable people in a cabin in the woods and pick them off gleefully one by one". In this case, a bunch of nasty university students on spring break are besieged by a flesh-eating virus, seemingly crazed rednecks, and an even more crazed Alsatian. Has a really quite charming twist at the end.
Movie count for 2014: 19
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
In the Days Before Television
Rocket Ship XM: Oddly-paced B-movie about a mission to the moon which goes wrong and hits Mars instead. Suffers from a distinct lack of both characterisation and tension; even when the crew are being chased by Martian mutants or trying to make it back to Earth on too little fuel, it's hard to care. It also can't seem to make up its mind if it's a B-picture or not; it has cliched characterisation, space adventure and Martian mutants, but it also has no antagonists (bar the abovementioned mutants), and a rather surprising ending, giving the whole thing the feel of one of the nerdier episodes of The Outer Limits. The sets are pretty nice, though.
The Star Packer: Unfortunately-named early John Wayne film, with no incidental music and minimal editing. Features Wayne as a sheriff out to save a girl from evil outlaws with the aid of his ethnic stereotype of an Indian sidekick. There's a couple of nice stunts during the climactic wagon-chase and shootout, but one can't help but suspect that it's where the budget went. It can be entertaining to think of a better film for the name (a Brando-esque drama about an excellent factory worker, pitted against a corrupt union? A sports picture about the meteoric rise and fall of Green Bay's best quarterback?) but it's still not worth it.
Movie count for 2013: 18 (SF London Film Festival coming up in a couple of weeks, hooray!)
The Star Packer: Unfortunately-named early John Wayne film, with no incidental music and minimal editing. Features Wayne as a sheriff out to save a girl from evil outlaws with the aid of his ethnic stereotype of an Indian sidekick. There's a couple of nice stunts during the climactic wagon-chase and shootout, but one can't help but suspect that it's where the budget went. It can be entertaining to think of a better film for the name (a Brando-esque drama about an excellent factory worker, pitted against a corrupt union? A sports picture about the meteoric rise and fall of Green Bay's best quarterback?) but it's still not worth it.
Movie count for 2013: 18 (SF London Film Festival coming up in a couple of weeks, hooray!)
Sunday, April 06, 2014
What's Wrong With "The Musketeers" (BBC1 Version)
1. The characterisation. Seriously, one of the reasons The Three Musketeers has been so frequently adapted is because of the simple, easy-to-understand characterisation of the main characters: there's the Romantic One, the Angry One, and the One of Prodigious Appetites, plus the Naive and Innocent One. The fact that the series itself regularly became confused over which one was Romantic, Be-Appetited or Angry, with all three Musketeers being all three at all times, is a real problem.
2. Race. I was really happy when I saw that Porthos was played by a black actor-- it's a nice nod to the fact that Alexandre Dumas was himself black, as well as acknowledging that not everyone in pre-industrial Europe was white. However, because the series was filmed in Croatia, all of the extras were white-- and so was 99% of the guest cast (apart from a cameo by Ashley Waters), meaning that for 9 out of 10 episodes, Porthos appears to be almost the only black person in France, and no one appears to notice. And the 10th? That's the horribly patronising one about the slave trade. Which brings me on to...
3) Historical accuracy (lack of). Yes, I know it's a drama, and that dramas take liberties with historical facts. But this one's connection to history is so tenuous it might as well be set in Ruritania as in France. The abovementioned slave-trade episode is particularly egregious (17th-century France has no major colonies? That's news to any Canadian raised on stories of the coureurs de bois and the Jesuit missions), but it's far from the only offender.
4) Familiarity. 17th-century France is a pretty strange place by modern standards, a society with very different ideas about legitimate governance, the value of life, the place of religion, marital fidelity, and science. This is a popular drama so I'm not expecting Hawksmoor, but it can't be impossible to nonetheless give an idea of the foreignness of the past-- hell, even the likes of Poldark managed it better. Just to give an example: at one point a character exclaims, "I'm a citizen of France! I have rights!" to which someone ought to have responded "No, on both counts, for at least another 150 years." ETA: Even more inexcusable when you consider that Game of Thrones is set in a society with child marriage, eunuchs, polytheism, and a royal family with a rather liberal attitude towards incest, and yet doesn't seem to have alienated its audience one bit.
5) Repetition. Someone is accused of a crime they didn't commit. But it's actually all a ruse to entrap someone else. Lather, rinse, repeat. The series is only 10 episodes long, for heaven's sake!
Good points: Peter Capaldi, of course; the characterisation of Louis XIII was a lot subtler than I was expecting, and yes, they did find some pretty palaces to film in (even if those shots of the painted ceilings did get old rather fast). For the first few episodes it was fun to do a counterfactual reading of the series in which the Cardinal is actually the hero and the Musketeers the villains, though that did get boring eventually.
2. Race. I was really happy when I saw that Porthos was played by a black actor-- it's a nice nod to the fact that Alexandre Dumas was himself black, as well as acknowledging that not everyone in pre-industrial Europe was white. However, because the series was filmed in Croatia, all of the extras were white-- and so was 99% of the guest cast (apart from a cameo by Ashley Waters), meaning that for 9 out of 10 episodes, Porthos appears to be almost the only black person in France, and no one appears to notice. And the 10th? That's the horribly patronising one about the slave trade. Which brings me on to...
3) Historical accuracy (lack of). Yes, I know it's a drama, and that dramas take liberties with historical facts. But this one's connection to history is so tenuous it might as well be set in Ruritania as in France. The abovementioned slave-trade episode is particularly egregious (17th-century France has no major colonies? That's news to any Canadian raised on stories of the coureurs de bois and the Jesuit missions), but it's far from the only offender.
4) Familiarity. 17th-century France is a pretty strange place by modern standards, a society with very different ideas about legitimate governance, the value of life, the place of religion, marital fidelity, and science. This is a popular drama so I'm not expecting Hawksmoor, but it can't be impossible to nonetheless give an idea of the foreignness of the past-- hell, even the likes of Poldark managed it better. Just to give an example: at one point a character exclaims, "I'm a citizen of France! I have rights!" to which someone ought to have responded "No, on both counts, for at least another 150 years." ETA: Even more inexcusable when you consider that Game of Thrones is set in a society with child marriage, eunuchs, polytheism, and a royal family with a rather liberal attitude towards incest, and yet doesn't seem to have alienated its audience one bit.
5) Repetition. Someone is accused of a crime they didn't commit. But it's actually all a ruse to entrap someone else. Lather, rinse, repeat. The series is only 10 episodes long, for heaven's sake!
Good points: Peter Capaldi, of course; the characterisation of Louis XIII was a lot subtler than I was expecting, and yes, they did find some pretty palaces to film in (even if those shots of the painted ceilings did get old rather fast). For the first few episodes it was fun to do a counterfactual reading of the series in which the Cardinal is actually the hero and the Musketeers the villains, though that did get boring eventually.
Thursday, April 03, 2014
What's Been On My Skybox Lately
Robocop 3: You know the series has completely hit bottom when a character calls Lewis a "dumb broad", and then it takes a pickaxe and continues digging. Torchwood-like resistance, annoying child hacker, xenophobia, sexism, this film has it all. The Japanese robot is sort of cool, though.
The Invention of Lying: Satire about a world in which no one can lie, except Ricky Gervais. Starts to get really good around about the point where it flat out says religion is a lie, but then realises where it's going and cranks the plot around to turn it into a fairly conventional romcom (complete with the usual annoying woman-as-prize trope)
American Werewolf in London: Groundbreaking, and uncompromising, horror-comedy, and quite probably the only film about Americans in the UK which manages to patronise neither Americans nor Brits. Watch for an uncredited appearance by Rik Mayall.
Little Voice: A story about how sometimes it takes a world-shattering tragedy to break free of your constraints and start really living your life.
From Here to Eternity: Drama about an infantry base in Hawaii on the eve of WWII; brilliantly characterised, even if I did wind up hating one of the nominal protagonists (he was well-drawn and believable, but a completely selfish jerk). It only has one real problem, namely, that it's implied that once the incompetent chief officer is removed from the base, it will stop being a hotbed of bullying and corruption and instead run smoothly; other military dramas have taken that ball and run with it down a rather more pessimistic direction.
Movie Count for 2014: 16
The Invention of Lying: Satire about a world in which no one can lie, except Ricky Gervais. Starts to get really good around about the point where it flat out says religion is a lie, but then realises where it's going and cranks the plot around to turn it into a fairly conventional romcom (complete with the usual annoying woman-as-prize trope)
American Werewolf in London: Groundbreaking, and uncompromising, horror-comedy, and quite probably the only film about Americans in the UK which manages to patronise neither Americans nor Brits. Watch for an uncredited appearance by Rik Mayall.
Little Voice: A story about how sometimes it takes a world-shattering tragedy to break free of your constraints and start really living your life.
From Here to Eternity: Drama about an infantry base in Hawaii on the eve of WWII; brilliantly characterised, even if I did wind up hating one of the nominal protagonists (he was well-drawn and believable, but a completely selfish jerk). It only has one real problem, namely, that it's implied that once the incompetent chief officer is removed from the base, it will stop being a hotbed of bullying and corruption and instead run smoothly; other military dramas have taken that ball and run with it down a rather more pessimistic direction.
Movie Count for 2014: 16
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