Dollhouse: Season 1

Warning: spoilers and intense geekery.

Hidden underground and spoken of only as urban legend, the Dollhouse, run by Adelle deWitte, is a place of needs and fantasies. Populated by Actives, volunteers whose memories are routinely wiped to allow their brains to be imprinted with new, custom-made personalities, the Dollhouse can provide anything from a hostage negotiator to a dominatrix for any engagement specified by their (extremely wealthy) clients. Kept in a blank, childlike state when not on missions, the Actives are supposed to have no residual personalities – but one doll, Echo (Eliza Dushku), begins to challenge that definition. As FBI Agent Paul Ballard endures the ridicule of his collagues to hunt down the Dollhouse, Echo begins to experience flashbacks to her previous life. What is real purpose of the Dollhouse? What role does the Rossum Corporation play in its operation? And what secrets are hiding in Echo’s past? 

What with one thing and another, I only began watching Season 1 of Dollhouse this week, when our DVD copy arrived. I finished it last night, which meant that my efforts at falling asleep afterwards were thwarted by a strong desire to sit and think about the show. From the moment Dollhouse was announced, it has been the subject of extremely mixed reviews: people both love and hate it, but there’s also a strong middle contingent who like the later episodes, but not the first five, or who are resentful of various elements. One of the most common criticisms I’ve seen centres on the fact that Echo, the protagonist, lacks a personality, making it impossible to care about her development. Given that strong characters are a Joss Whedon hallmark, this has also lead to complaint within the geek community that Whedon has abandoned his strengths, and further, to the opinion that many people are only watching Dollhouse out of loyalty to his earlier work – that is, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.

Given that I’m a fan of all those ealier shows, and having been knee-deep in negative press since day one, it’s something of an understatement to say that I’ve brought nerves and tredpidation to Dollhouse. I was braced for it to be awful or melodramatic, perhaps after the fashion of the Jasmine arc on Season 4 of Angel, of which I was not overly enamoured. In accordance with the views of various blogs, I was prepared to endure confused plotlines, bad characterisation, a proliferation of unnecessary detective/cop elements, cheesy sets and untenable ideas – not all at once, of course, because everyone percieves things differently, but I was keeping an open mind as to where the flaws would lie. In short, despite my great affection for Joss Whedon, I had donned the mental equivalent of mourning garb. Watching would be like attending a funeral: there would be moments of great beauty and sadness, but overall, the sense would be one of loss, missed opportunity and things gone wrong.

Instead, I loved every minute of it.

The writing is brilliant – wry, wacky, intelligent and with that subtle thread of poetry I’ve come to expect from Whedon’s work. The sets are beautiful. The acting is brilliant, as is the versatility and range of the actors. Superficially, it’s different from anything Whedon has done before, but the soul of the show is built around questions of identity, moral grey areas, the boundaries of science and the essence of human nature, which, quite arguably, are at the core of all his previous endeavours. In accordance with the universal dictum that nothing is perfect, the fight scenes, though choreographed with a certain savage beauty, are irksome. Unlike the equivalent biffo in Buffy and Angel, their length and extreme violence lack the justification of supernaturally strong protagonists. A better move might have been to borrow from Firefly, where the encounters were short, brutal and tended to result in actual, visible injuries. But as gripes go, disliking the fight scenes is hardly pivotal: what matters are the plot and characterisation, neither of which suffers for having Paul Ballard thrown into one too many tables.

 For me, there is no truth to the assertion that Dollhouse is a major departure for Whedon. Going back to his earlier shows, it’s easy to see a genuine and prolonged fascination with questions of identity, choice, morality and human nature. Looking at Buffy, the show is rife with scenarios designed to make the audience think about who the characters really are. Though its mechanisms are different – robot copies, soulless vampire dopplegangers, split selves, bodyswaps, magical compulsions and spirit possessions all stand in for the mindwipes and personality imprints of Dollhouse - their purpose is the same: to show us the impact of different personas inhabiting the same body. In the Season 4 episode Who Are You, for example, Buffy and rogue slayer faith Faith swap bodies, allowing each to see how the other is nominally treated. By viewing herself from the outside, Faith literally comes face to face with the truth of her own crimes, such that, when she is forced to attack her own body, she lays into it with a vengeance, screaming obscenities, not at Buffy, who she is osentisbly fighting, but at herself. Compare this scene to the end of Omega, the 12th Dollhouse episode, where Echo’s body plays host to an amalgam of every personality imprint she’s ever used, while her original, pre-Dollhouse persona, Caroline, is downloaded into the body of a random girl. Echo tells Caroline that, in signing up for the Dollhouse program, she has effectively abandoned herself: that the person speaking is not a person at all, but only a ‘porch light, waiting for you to come home.’

Angel, too, plays similar games with our notions of identity. In Season 5, Fred’s body is hollowed out and ultimately stolen by the demon Illyria over the course of two episodes, A Hole in the World and Shells. Fred’s soul is destroyed, but Illyria still has access to her memories and can, indeed, mimic her behaviour exactly, forcing a constant evaluation of her own identity. At the same time, Fred’s lover, Wesley, finds himself constantly haunted by the physical presence of the woman he loved. Illyria is drawn to Wesley, and offers to become Fred in order to comfort him, but Wesley refuses: it might be the same body, he says, but Fred’s soul is gone, and anything Illyria offers him is a lie. By contrast, Episode 9 of Dollhouse, A Spy in the House of Love, sees a lonely Adelle trysting secretly with Victor, having fallen in love with one of his imprinted personalities. One poignant scene has Victor suggest the two run away together: Adelle knows this is impossible, but still talks longingly of a world without clocks, where it it just the two of them. The pretense ultimately proves too much for her: by the end of the episode, she orders the beloved personality shelved, all while watching Victor, now in his doll state, walk obliviously by.

It’s harder to make comparisons with Firefly. Not only was it shortlived, but it was also a different sort of show, arguably constituting a greater thematic departure from Buffy and Angel than Dollhouse has done, though certainly not in any negative sense. Even so, the episode Our Mrs Reynolds still manages to provoke questions of identity, when Saffron, ostensibly a naive young woman, stows away on Serenity, claiming to have been married to Mal the night before in payment for the crew ridding her settlement of bandits. As things turn out, ‘Saffron’ is a highly trained conwoman and assassin: her transformation from one persona to another makes for a fantastic twist, but also serves to highlight the difference a change of behaviour makes in our perception of the same person. To all intents and purposes, ‘Saffron’ never existed – like Echo’s personality imprints, she was a means to an end, but that doesn’t mean there’s noting underneath. More generally in Firefly, the technology used to turn River Tam into a psychic is an interesting predecessor to the Dollhouse chair. Both are tools with an immediate, illicit application linked to the murkier, higher purpose of a shadowy organisation: the Rising Sun Corporation in Firefly, and the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse. Given Joss Whedon’s penchant for naming all things with a purpose, the phonetic similarity hardly seems a coincidence.

To my way of thinking, the most powerful Dollhouse episodes in Season 1 are Echoes and Needs (7 and 8, respectively), which recall the very best of Whedon’s not inconsiderable abilities. As part of his continued seeking after identity, a favourite technique has been the addition of some new element, be it magical or chemical, which causes the characters to behave differently. In Echoes, this is a drug which causes a loss of inhibitions: Adelle, Dominic and Topher act like stoned children, while the supposedly immune Actives undergo traumatic flashbacks to events they were meant to have forgotten. In Buffy, there are many equivalent examples to choose from. Chief among these are Band Candy (Season 3), in which a shipment of enchanted chocolate causes the adults of Sunnydale to revert to their teenage personalities; Something Blue (Season 4), where a grieving Willow accidentally lays a series of magical compulsions on her friends; and Tabula Rasa (Season 6), wherein a memory spell backfires, causing every member of the main cast to forget who they are. Angel, too, has similar moments, although these play as direct counterparts to earlier Buffy episodes: Spin the Bottle (Season 4) sees our heroes revert to their teenage selves, while Life of the Party (Season 5) has Lorne in Willow’s shoes, unwittingly causing his friends to take his instructions to their literal extreme.

 There’s a lot of mischief to these episodes, a topsy-turvey examination of the logic behind our actions, and - perhaps more significantly – the fact that our logic changes over time. Remove the guidance of earlier lessons, these stories suggests, and our behaviour certainly alters – but what of our personalities? In her original life as Caroline, Echo was strong, capable, a lateral thinker, compassionate and determined. We are given glimpses of this in flashbacks, but her core behaviours are also evidenced at moments of vulnerability, when the brainwashing of the Dollhouse breaks down and her real personality emerges. The extent of this phenomenon is explored throughout Dollhouse, but particularly in Needs, when several of the Actives are allowed to escape. The purpose of the exercise is to bring them emotional closure: once they find what they want, a sedative in their brains kicks in. They are then retrieved and restored to the Dollhouse, ready to be wiped.

What’s so intriguing about the show is the success with which it juggles the morality of the Dollhouse. We do not hate the sharp, wry Adelle, who runs the house, nor do we depise Topher, the babbling boy genius in charge of the imprint technology. Neither are we comfortable with the practise of what is, essentially, slavery. From flashbacks, we know that Echo signed a contract to spend five years in the Dollhouse, and that she knew exactly what she was getting herself in for. At the same time, we know that Sierra, at least, had no say in the matter, and that Adelle is not beyond turning her enemies into dolls. In at least one instance, we have seen an Active complete their term of service and leave, fully paid and unharmed, despite having no memory of what they’ve done. But this is still not an ideal solution: as Echo/Caroline struggles to assert her personality, it becomes clear that she won’t be whole until all her memories are restored to her – not just the ones she came in with, but knowledge of everything that’s happened to her since then. There are moments of moral clarity, and moments when we know, with absolute certainty, that something is wrong. But between these extremes are many shades of grey, and one which, so far, Whedon is doing an excellent job of exploring.

For all my doubts and preconceptions, I enjoyed every episode of Dollhouse. This is intelligent, challenging television, and an in-depth look at some of Joss Whedon’s most favoured and long-standing themes. I haven’t started Season 2 yet, not having access to it, but if what I’ve seen thus far is anything to go by, we’re in for some clever, moving and thought-provoking narratives – which is exactly what Whedon has always excelled at providing.

Inglourious Basterds

Warning: total spoilers.

By and large, I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 and Death Proof are among my favourite films, and I’m far from averse to cinematic violence. I hadn’t heard much about Inglourious Basterds, but given that it was Tarantino, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

This is not a course of action I would reccommend to anyone.

Inglourious Basterds is, without a doubt, one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It is a Tarantino production only insofar as there is graphic violence, and even then, it’s not up to his usual standard. But I’m getting ahead of myself: first, before we proceed any further, a plot summary.

Our story begins in Nazi-occupied France, where Col. Hans Landa, central antagonist of the film and nicknamed the Jewhunter, is in the process of questioning a local dairy farmer, whom he suspects of harbouring a Jewish family. Drawn out over roughly half an hour, their conversation serves to introduce three plot elements: Landa’s facility with languages, his conversational eccentricity, and the eventual massacre of the Dreyfus family, who are hiding beneath the farmer’s floorboards. The latter is relevant not only as a means of demonstrating Nazi brutality, but because the teenage Shoshanna Dreyfus, our soon-to-be heroine, escapes and flees for the hills.

Cut to Brad Pitt – sorry, Lt. Aldo Raine – addressing a group of Jewish American soldiers, the titular Inglourious Basterds, as they prepare to head behind German lines. Their mission, as described by the distantly part-Apache Raine, is to collect the scalps of one hundred Nazis apiece, a task they are positively hankerin’ to accomplish. Over an hour passes before these two plotlines meet up, but then, at two and a half hours long, the film is quite happy to take its time. Eventually, however, all becomes clear, or at least marginally less uncorrelated: now four years older, Shoshanna Dreyfus is running a cinema in Paris under an assumed French identity, where a young Nazi soldier, Fredrick Zoller, the subject of a soon-to-be-released propaganda film produced by Joseph Goebbels, starts to take an interest in her life. Almost instantly, Zoller decides that Shoshanna’s cinema will be the venue for the premiere of his film – at which point, enter the Basterds and some British allies, who, with the help of German actress-slash-double-agent Bridget von Hammersmark, are planning to blow up the opening night, thereby killing not only Goebbels, but all of the Nazi high command and even the Fuhrer himself. Shoshanna, meanwhile, having been forced to endure a meal in the company of both Goebbels and Landa, has her own plans for eliminating the Nazis on opening night, operating parallel to, but not in concert with, the efforts of the Basterds.

Wacky hijinks, as they say, ensue. Or at least, that seems to have been the general intention. But despite its complex tangential plotting, eccentric supporting characters and bizarre premise, Inglourious Basterds is anything but entertaining. Though usually a master of black humour, witty dialogue and satisfying revenge plots, Tarantino has, in this instance, unfathomably failed to perform in even one of these categories, let alone all three. The grand finale, which features Hitler being shot with a machine gun as the leaders of the Nazi party burn to death, fails on so many levels that it’s difficult to articulate; and when watching Jewish soldiers gun down Hitler in a Tarantino movie isn’t even remotely funny, satisfying or relevant, then it’s fair to say that, somewhere along the line, things have gone spectacularly wrong.

More than anything else, Inglourious Basterds stylistically resembles a Tarantino version of the most recent Cohen Brothers offering, Burn After Reading. Both featured casts composed almost entirely of vile, morally bereft characters, none of whom were the least bit likeable, which consequently made them difficult to watch; both featured loosely interwoven, anti-cathartic plotlines where an excess of human error and mad violence saw everything go horribly wrong; and both starred Brad Pitt as a weird guy with a moustache, although at least in Burn After Reading, he was given a couple of good lines.

At every turn, the viewer encounters a mess of contradictions. We are meant to enjoy seeing Nazis shot, burned and beaten to death on principle, as Lt. Raine’s opening speech makes abundantly clear – a somewhat redunant message, as this will be the automatic position of most viewers. But from thereon in, the Basterds themselves are endowed with no personalities, no histories, no redeeming qualities: they are viscious, avenging demons, which might still be workable were it not for the fact that every Nazi they encounter is given more depth, more humanity and better dialouge than the whole group put together. This makes for some grim, uneasy scenes: there is simply nowhere for the viewer to turn. Raine and his men are faceless brutes, impossible to like, while the Nazis, though more complex characters, are still Nazis. With both sides thus rendered unpalatable, the only hope of narrative salvation lies with Shoshanna Dreyfus, but even there, the audience is denied. Tarantino has a solid history when it comes to revenge films, particularly as orchestrated through the actions of strong, wronged women, but in the final wrap, despite the fact that Landa is directly responsible for murdering the Dreyfus family, he ends up the only Nazi of our acquaintance left alive. Indeed, Shoshanna never so much as singles him out for revenge, instead concentrating her suicidal efforts on bringing down the whole Reich establishment, and while this is not a cardinal sin in and of itself, it stands as a massive and poorly-executed departure from Tarantino’s stock in trade.

Smaller problems, too, abound. Samuel L. Jackson’s token voice-overs are bizarre, given that (a) he doesn’t have so much as a cameo role  and (b) the film is otherwise entirely unnarrated. The deliberate misspelling of Inglourious Basterds is shown only once, carved into a rifle butt, with no explanation. We see one character flash back to being whipped, presumably by the Nazis, in an incident which has hitherto never been mentioned, but which appears only minutes before the subject is killed, thus rendering it pointless. Shoshanna and her lover plan death for the Nazis, but while suicide is never discussed, neither do they try and save themselves. History is completely abused in orchestrating the grand finale, but tiny fragments of accurate socio-historical minutiae, like accents, hand gestures and detailed cinema knowledge, nonetheless prove the undoing of multiple characters. Arguably, this latter point is the straw which breaks the donkey’s back. Having spent over an hour painstakingly building up one suite of characters, Tarantino then kills all save one of them in the type of scene which is best described, in the immortal words of Something Positive webcartoonist Randy Milholland, as belonging to the ’Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies‘ oeuvre.

I wish I could say otherwise, but when push comes to shove, Inglourious Basterds is two-point-five hours of my life – and yours – that can never be reclaimed. If you want to see a gripping action film with brilliant scripting, awesome effects, humour, genuine insight and future cult status, then I suggest you buy tickets for District 9. Anything else is folly.

5 Reasons Why Sookie Stackhouse Is Awesome

Warning: spoilers ahoy!

As keen readers of this blog may have noticed, I am currently overseas on what has thus far been a holiday. I say thus far because at some point in the near future, I will have to find myself a job, however temporarily, in order to supplement our saved monies with new monies. But until that happy day arrives, I will continue to enjoy a glorious abundance of reading time. Since our departure on August 20 – eighteen days ago - I have read fourteen books. And of those fourteen, eight have come courtesy of Charliane Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire series. Only the most recent volume, Dead and Gone, has escaped my eagle eye, and that’s because (a) it’s still in hardback and (b) I want to savour it. Also, I only finished From Dead to Worse last night. At 1 am.

Being a regular occupant of the fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal section of various bookshops, I think I can reasonably claim that, up until the recent advent of the True Blood TV series, which is based on the books, Charlaine Harris was not taking up nearly so much shelf space in Australia as is currently the case. In fact, I only knew of the series through an online article comparing the roles and personalities of various women in vampire books, and despite having had True Blood recommended to me by several friends – and despite the fact that the article itself mentions True Blood – it wasn’t until I wandered into a store and found a prominently displayed copy of Dead Until Dark emblazoned with a reference to the TV show that I realised one was based on the other. It was enough to make me buy the first book, which I finished at the airport, and from there on in, I have been shamelessly hooked.

So let me cut to the title of this piece: Sookie Stackhouse – and Charlaine Harris – are awesome. With each book, I find myself making notes on exactly why the series works; I can’t vouch for True Blood, not having watched it (yet), but here are my top 5 reasons why Sookie Stackhouse beats the pants off every other vampire-lovin’ heroine on offer:

1. The Setting

Sookie Stackhouse lives in a little town in Northern Louisiana called Bon Temps. Unlike Sunnydale, home of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bon Temps is not endowed with a local hospital, seaport, airport, military base or university campus as the narrative requries: rather, it genuinely is a small town, and manages to remain so despite Sookie’s many adventures. Despite her strong cast of locals, Harris feels no pressing need to set every single incident in Bon Temps, happily moving events to bigger cities like Shreveport, Dallas and New Orleans; and when she does write about Sookie’s home ground, there’s always a strong sense of local humdrum. People hold grudges; they get married, or engaged, or pregnant; and while these happenings aren’t at the core of the series, they nonetheless glue everything together.

2. The Real (and Unreal) World

This is something of a sticking point for urban fantasy stories. The notion of a secret world existing beneath the real one is definitely intriguing, but the very fact of that secrecy means that the real world must play second fiddle to supernatural events: the magic-world can impinge on real-world events as a matter of course, but except for human ignorance necessitating secrecy in the first place, the reverse is rarely true. By creating a setting where vampires alone of a thriving supernatural world have revealed themselves to the public, Harris has created an intriguing, original balance between the real and the magical. There is a publicly anti-vampire church called the Fellowship of the Sun, and there are maenads, fairies, half-demons and their kindred keeping out of sight. There are vampire-exclusive hotels and airlines, and hidden inbred communities of wereanimals. There are vampire groupies (fangbangers), humans who make an illegal living from draining and selling vampire blood for its potent qualities (Drainers) and anomalies like Sookie. In the backdrop of each story are supernatural politics: werewolves and shifters debating whether to take the vampire path and reveal themselves, vampires trying to ‘mainstream’ and live among humans, ancient vampire politics revitalised for the modern age, and laws being blocked or passed in government that affect the vampire community. Perhaps most significantly, the effect of Hurricane Katrina finds its way into the narrative, a real-real world event crossing into real-and-magical world territory. As per Anne Rice’s established canon, Harris started out by treating New Orleans as a vampire mecca, and set the sixth Sookie book, Definitely Dead, in the city. It was published after the hurricane had struck, but as its events took place - quite by accident – in the months prior to Katrina, Harris was able to integrate the tragedy into Sookie’s chronology without recourse to retconning. As a consequence, the plots of the following volumes - All Together Dead and From Dead to Worse – are both contingent on Katrina having disrupted vampire and werewolf territories, forcing migrations between states and providing Sookie with houseguests from New Orleans, friends whose homes were destroyed or damaged in the disaster. At a micro level, Harris has a profound sense of events having consequences, and of the fact that sometimes, there’s a delay between cause and effect. None of her Sookie books is entirely cathartic, but rather consists of a segment of life, some aspects of which lead naturally to future plots, while others don’t - and in a supernatural series, that particular realism is wonderful.

3. The Human Element

Thanks to Harris’s skills as a writer, Sookie Stackhouse is an entirely believable character. Having been raised in Bon Temps, she’s never been to college and is largely self-educated; she says her prayers at night before falling asleep, worries about the choices she makes, budgets for house repairs, shops, works, pays her bills, and in every important respect reads as a real person. This is true of all Harris’s characters, even when they aren’t entirely human: there are no straw men to be found, and the fact that Sookie is a telepathic narrator means that even passing characters can have their thoughts refreshingly outlined without the need for a break in narrative voice. Even the vampires, to whom Sookie is attracted precisely because she can’t read their minds, feel like representatives of a real and different species in their own right: Harris has managed to make them both alien and familiar all at once, and not just brooding humans with a fetish for necks. 

4. The Chemistry

There’s something very sexy about the Sookie Stackhouse books – and by ’sexy’, I don’t mean our heroine spends 90% of the time with her kit off. Sookie enjoys sex, and there’s certainly some thrilling scenes, but the sexiness comes from the chemistry of well-crafted relationships, not just mindless boinking. The fact that Harris has distinguished fangbangers – vampire groupies – as a social phenomenon of her new world order is a welcome brow-raise to the legions of vampire heroines desperate to get themselves bit and turned. Sookie doesn’t want to be a vampire. She wants a family, a loving partner and money in the bank; and her dealings with vampires, when not sexual, focus primarily on the latter qualification. Even when she’s in love with one of the undead, she never so much as contemplates eternal life. There’s an extraordinarily welcome realism to the notion of a female heroine who is neither pining for centuries of love with the first vampire she meets nor constantly jumping the bones of anything supernatural. At times, Sookie might be looking for love in all the wrong places, but like so many real women, the important thing is that she is looking, and not just for a one night stand. Her telepathy means that any relationship with a normal human would be shortlived: it would simply be too painful to be constantly aware of all the negative thoughts, repressed fantasies and disloyal impulses that cross the regular human mind – and if we, as readers, are honest with ourselves, we can understand this in a heartbeat.

5. The Genre

Ignoring their paranormal and romantic themes, the Sookie Stackhouse novels are well-written mysteries in their own right. Harris’s gift for realistic background detail and her avoidance of false catharsis makes the whodunit element a genuine page-turner. Sookie-as-narrator thinks in a playful, often humerous voice, with an earthy, sensible grounding  – perhaps an uncommon feature of fantasy heroines, but one which serves both creator and character in excellent stead. The Sookie Stackhouse books would be at home in multiple sections of the bookstore, and yet are decidedly unformulaic. It is not a requirement of each book that Sookie has sex, or kills someone, or falls in love – rather, there are various things which may or may not happen, and each story is a different triangulation of familiar points. Events progress; relationships end; minor characters dip in and out – the people behave like people. There is humour, and danger, and luck – the latter always being a tricky thing to write, but which Harris pulls off with aplomb – and there is comfort, and loss, and a natural advancement of Sookie’s knowledge of the hidden world. Harris has said recently that she has a couple more Sookie books in her, and while I fervently hope this is the case, I also hope that, when she does eventually leave Bon Temps to fend for itself, she only closes half the doors, and leaves a couple of windows open. Because that  realness – that sense of possibility, of the day to day, of small events making big waves and big events causing micro changes – is what creates such an abiding sense of affection for the series. Sookie Stackhouse is a wonderful gal, and luckily for both her and Harris, she’s found the writer she deserves.

Angels & Demons

Firstly: Major spoiler alert!

Secondly: I am a sucker for trashy action/thriller/fantasy flicks, which perhaps explains why I exist in a state of near constant debt to the local video store for failing to return Hellboy or Journey to the Centre of the Earth on time.

Thirdly: The DaVinci Code was on TV the other week. In accordance with the aforesaid suckerishness, I’d seen it at the movies, but seeing as how the TV was already on, and the remote was all the way over there, and I was just mucking around on the laptop anyway, I ended up watching most of it again.

Which is why, last night, my husband and I shelled out something in the vicinity of fifty bucks to see Angels and Demons, no less than seventeen dollars of which paid for two medium drinks and a packet of peanut M&Ms. Out of morbid curiosity, I had the popcorn jockey, who looked about nine, explain the individual pricings to me in a slow voice. There should be some kind of Goddam law prohibing the sale of readily attainable junk at 200% markup, or maybe I just need a radioelectric shock collar that activates when I and my wallet come within a ten meter radius of the candybar, which, by the way, is a stupid American word that I resent using.

Anyway.

So, Angels and Demons. If you want to see Tom Hanks explaining why male statues in the Vatican have had their penises replaced with fig leaves, it’s really your best bet, although contrary to one review I read, there are no exploding priests. Which isn’t to say it’s dull: the plot moves along swiftly, there are several nice lines, the cast is well-picked and Ewan McGregor does a fantastic job as the Camerlengo. The physics is complete and utter rubbish, of course, and even had I not been able to tell for myself, it was confirmed by a friend whose father is a senior engineer at CERN. Fortunately, any attempts at scientific explanation take a backseat to Ayelet Zurer being anxious about battery life and hurrying a good deal. There’s a lot of exposition, but the run-time, though long, didn’t feel inappropriate, and as a nice touch, there were no strawmen among the religious characters.

The biggest problem comes from Dan Brown’s tendency to reuse the same twist. Thus, one can summarise both Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code as follows: The Superficially Good Guy Is Actually The Bad Guy, While The Superficially Bad Guy Is Really Just A Zealous Police Officer Trying To Do His Job. Which means, if you are even slightly cynical, that the entire film is spent waiting for Ewan McGregor to stop being helpful and start snarling – which, true to form, he eventually does. Though disappointed, I salvaged some cheering geekery from the notion of Obi-Wan Kenobi playing an essential Palpatine, wielding power through his benign visage and a Sith Lord’s talent for deception. My husband rolled his eyes and reminded me that not everything can or should be reduced to Star Wars, but in this instance, I begged to differ. 

Angels and Demons is not a bad film. Neither is it brilliant. Unless you’ve got a yen for the big screen, you’re probably better off waiting for DVD, but  if you go, you’ll at least  have something to talk about afterwards. And often, that’s the best part of any film.

Watchmen

Warning: Spoilers ahoy!

As is always the case when someone takes a cult story and makes it into a film, there’s going to be problems. All creative endeavours are open to dislike, but beloved masterpieces are trickier still. It’s not just about fidelity: it’s about emphasis, interpretation. One Watchmen review described this phenomenon thusly: that “every adaptation must be some kind of betrayal.” It’s a poignant observation, and one which applies equally to the act of criticism. More than at any other time, reviewing such a film declares our own biases, our own view of the original narrative, and lays the issue open to yet more disagreement, emotive or otherwise. I’ve come quite late to the Watchmen party – just in time to ensure that my husband, too, had read it before today’s screening – but even so, my attachment to the story is considerable. I went in feeling sceptical, but lightly optimistic. I hated 300, director Zack Snyder’s other big comics-originating blockbuster, with a fiery vengeance, but for reasons of plot as much as for the ludicrous stylisation. Then again, Sin City (by 300’s Frank Miller) and V for Vendetta (by Watchmen’s Alan Moore) are two of my favourite narratives ever. In other words, I was ready to be persuaded.

The opening scene of Watchmen – the murder of Edward Blake, the Comedian – made me angry. Being a long-time connoisseur of trashy action flicks, I’m hardly averse to either gore or gratuitously choreographed fightscenes, but this one left a sour taste. Apart from Dr Manhattan and, to a vastly lesser extent, Ozymandias, none of the watchmen are anywhere near approaching superhuman. Rather, they’re a squad of Batman-men: fit, fast, experienced and well-trained, but physically human. More importantly, Watchmen itself is a dark and gritty tale which, despite several violent protagonists, never makes violence seem cool. Combine these two facts, and Snyder’s lengthy, stylised combat betrays a profound misunderstanding of the source material, not just in the opening scene, but throughout the film.

It’s worth mentioning that Watchmen closely follows the arc of the graphic novel: precious few scenes are displaced from their original order, while a vast majority of the dialouge comes straight from Moore. The casting, effects and costuming, too, are brilliant: Billy Cruddup is excellent as the otherworldly Dr Manhattan,while Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach is chillingly superb. Nonetheless, for every moment of narrative satisfaction - Archimedes, Mars, the journal - there is another of jarring dislocation. The bizarre, overlong sex-scene between Dan and Sally is one such offence; the introduction of the energy crisis plotline is another. The most awful moment, however, comes as a giant Dr Manhattan stalks the fields of Vietnam, exploding VietCong to the thunderous chords of Ride of the Valkyries, at which point the desire to strangle Zack Snyder and demand to know why anyone, even the man who made 300, would think that Good Morning, Vietnam! was an appropriate point of reference. If a single scene could be said to epitomise the failings of Watchmen, then this is it.

Even so, it still came as a shock to reach the end and realise that, despite their by-and-large adherence to Moore’s work, the writers had taken it upon themselves to change the ending. I don’t mean millions of people didn’t die: I mean there was no psychic blast from a giant, dead, genetically-modified abomination of science. Rather, Ozymandias simply harnessed the power of Dr Manhattan and disintegrated citizens in cities around the world. From a distance, perhaps, this might seem neater, more personal, but up close, it robs us of the dead. It mutes the horror of cataclysm into something clinical, devoid of corpses, and instead of the world realistically banding together against the threat of creatures from another dimension, they unrealistically band together against a single American who, up until that point, had been publicly vaunted as both patriot and weapon. The psychology simply doesn’t hold: crazy and mad-science though the monster was, its purported origins ensued that no world power could be blamed for spawning it, while the choice of America-as-target humbled not only that government, but all who’d previously fought against them. Following the logic of Snyder’s version, given that multiple nations were attacked by (they believed) an essentially rogue American weapon, it seems decidedly counter-intuitive that they sue for peace rather than place blame. After all, Moore’s Watchmen is nothing if not a study in human nature. Take away his understanding of people, and you rob the story of its soul. 

Which, ultimately, is the film’s real problem. It looks, speaks and sometimes moves like Watchmen, but with every misstep, the realisation grows that some other, vastly less subtle intelligence is steering: even Rorschach’s name, phoenetically spelled in the book as raw shark, is mispronounced as raw shack. Great adaptors understand the betrayal of their actions, such that, rather than merely echoing form, they build on substance. Their changes respect the heart of the story, acknowledging that appearances, no matter how important, are still secondary. Snyder, by contrast, effects his changes clumsily, keeping the veneer at the expense of structural integrity. In this sense, his dedication to replicating Moore feels less like tribute and more like an acknowledgement that his own interpretation isn’t strong enough to stand alone. Scenes run long, slow and awkward in the transition between mediums, introducing cameo characters whose roles, though apparent to those of us who’ve read the comic, would doubtless confuse and frustrate a novice audience. As in recent adaptations of other books, notably the Harry Potter series, a not inconsiderable number of scenes in Watchmen count on the pre-existing knowledge of the viewer, rather than striving to be self-contained.

In a way, the absence of the Black Freighter Tales is symbolic of the film’s failure. Although this subplot – a comic within a comic – was always going to be extraordinarily difficult to reference cinematically, it perfectly mirrors the twisted actions of Adrian Veidt, showing us the rotten underbelly of Moore’s 1985 and epitomising the dark, uncertain morality of the minutemen. There’s moments of real enjoyment in Snyder’s work, and the length, despite the peg-legged gait of certain scenes, does not seem unduly, even though it nears the three hour mark. As a superhero film – an action film - it works, and many people will doubtless enjoy it on that level.  Certainly, there is no crime in doing so. But as a replication of Moore’s ethos, it fails. Like Dr Manhattan, the body is there, but the spirit is missing, evident only in occasional, haunting echoes. And for me, that says it all.

The Very Embodiment of Cultural Loathing

Dear America,

I’m thrilled you elected Obama. I really am – lord knows, you’re well overdue for a leader with smarts and social priorities. For the first time in long time, you’ve got a certain hefty percentage of world sympathy on your side. We’re happy for you.

But there’s something we need to discuss.

First, it was The Office. Remember that show? It didn’t always star Steve Carell. Then there was Kath and Kim, a beloved pair you left in tattered ruins. More recently, there’s been Life On Mars, a truly spectacular TV offering that, once again, you failed to comprehend. And now,  just now, I see you’re already planning a US version of Let The Right One In, a Swedish vampire flick that has only just come out.

Are you struck by this information? Does it seem odd to you that, apart from an endless parade of nation-specific reality TV spin-offs or the occasional new take on a old idea, you are the only ones who consistently remake viable, up to-date television in your own image? If there was a language barrier, perhaps you’d have an argument: successful dubbing is rare. But that’s not the case.

Back in the nineties, lots of people were worried about the influx of American television into Australia and the UK. Critics argued that it was killing off local product, while others fretted about the kids they saw wearing baseball caps and trying to talk like the Fresh Prince. They were worried about cultural identity, but ultimately, that turned out to be a teething phase. Once the novelty wore off and local producers started getting back in the game, we shrugged our shoulders. You make some damn good TV, after all. Why stifle ourselves by forcibly ignoring it?

But now, your cultural hegemony isn’t the issue. Cultural isolation is.

Because we learned from what you showed us. Seeing LA, New York, the ubiquitous ’hood, even the soft-lens airbrushed worlds of the daytime soapies were like windows into America. Cracked and dirty windows at times, or maybe the glass was warped, but sometimes, it shone beautifully clear, and we could see you. We learned how you saw yourselves.

But America, you won’t look at us. You don’t want to learn about the rest of the world, our slang, our peculiar humour, or even gaze down on our unfamiliar streets and wonder what it might be like to walk them. Instead, you turn each potential window into a mirror. And you see nothing but yourselves.

And this, when non-Americans get together and whinge about your country, this is what bothers us: more than the wars and more than the politics, if we’re honest, because those things are distant, as incomprehensible to the average us as to the average you. But our shows, their characters, are personal. We love them. Because of that love, we want to share them. And yet that step into the unknown, into renouncing your nationhood for just a half-hour to be someone else, consistently proves too frightening. Instead, you look away.

America, what you’re doing isn’t healthy. You need to see new things. And not all of you are to blame, I know that too – it’s the network executives who choose the content, who decide to remodel rather than import, but the time has come to stand up to them. Speak. Be brave. Watch something new. Watch something unAmerican. See us as we see ourselves.

And let that be a good thing.

 

Yrs sincerely, 

Foz

Real TV

As a genre, I categorically loathe reality TV, primarily because – despite the name – there is nothing real about it. There’s a fundamental tackiness to taking a bunch of aggro, whiny, pouty ingrates and locking them in an artificial environment with arbitrary rules designed exclusively, or so it seems, to exaggerate their behaviour and turn even the most tolerable participant into a caricature, no matter the window-dressing. I hate the explotative, morbid fascination these shows generate in people; the idea of nation-wide popularity contests; the kitsch showmanship that is brought even to the least awful end of the scale, wherein gifts or new gardens are bestowed upon charity cases. Reality TV is Not My Bag, Baby, and then some.

Still, people everywhere lap it up: rich and poor, religious and secular, bright and foolish, awful and lovely, young and old alike. Despite dissenters like myself, the world at large grooves on reality TV - for the time being, at least. And supposedly, the reason for this is the human element: the fact that all the posers, princesses, whore-madonnas, mansluts, bogans, C-list celebrities, tryhards, dorks and wannabees are supposedly representative of the population, which fact ensures that the audience relates. The total non-reality of the premise is conveniently overshadowed by the illusion of real people behaving as they would normally do, if (say) they were suddenly stranded on an island, locked in a loony bin or forced to turn into real estate agents. Even the most guilty viewer tends to justify the act as ‘people watching’, or something equally pseudo-scientific. Deep down, it seems, we have a voyeristic urge to watch others of our own species at their worst.

Which is why, reading of British outcry at the fact that Craig Ewert’s death by euthenasia was aired on national television, I feel very, very angry. Because Ewert’s death – the actual, tragic realness of it – is what reality TV shys away from, and yet purports to represent: the struggle of real people to cope with real obstacles. The same nation which rejoices in Idol and Big Brother shrieks in protest at an instant of actual, meaningful reality and – God forbid - the fact that it might provoke serious thought in the audience. At the very least, such outrage should make people realise that what they’ve been watching isn’t real, and, indeed, never was; that all their cries of sensationalist vouyerism are hypocritical, given that the producers behind American Idol are capable of putting a known stalker on their show to get a rise from one of their hosts, then shrugging when she subsequently commits suicide. In what universe should a brave man’s death be viewed as more awful than that?

Wake up, Western World. Wake up, put up, shut up and watch something real. Or would that be a bit too much like caring?

Twilight

When the media first started comparing Stephenie Meyer to J. K. Rowling, my hackles rose. Insofar as I could tell, both the mood and execution of their respective series seemed entirely different, a suspicion which was confirmed when, last month, I finally finished Twilight, the first book of Meyer’s quartet. Drifting through the life of Bella Swann is, in its own way, peaceful: the writing flows smoothly from page to page, a continuous, soothing rhythm comparable to soft music. The pace is good, and the characters are, by and large, believable. Given that I’m no longer wracked by teenage angst, however, I wasn’t nearly so invested in the ups and downs of Bella’s relationship as I once might’ve been. Consequently, I found the in-depth description of Edward’s every pose and expression frustrating, a troublesome sour note which, by itself, caused me to stop reading for two weeks at the halfway point. It’s not that Meyer writes clunkily – far from it. It’s simply that, as an adult, my attention is fixated less on the physicaility of fraught exchanges and more on their content.

From friends and reviews, I knew that Jacob Black was supposed to become a competing love interest later on, and a werewolf to boot. Invariably, this knowledge changed my expectations for the character: I was looking for someone to rival Edward by displaying a different kind of magnetism, helped along by the ancient were/vamp battle mojo. I was, therefore, extremely disappointed with the reality. Had Bella Swann gone to Forks and never met Edward Cullen, I felt, it was unlikely that she would’ve looked twice at Jacob. Which, of course, would be a different story; but the point of Edward and Bella is one of destiny - that regardless of the circumstances under which they met, the pair would fall in love. From Twilight, the same cannot be said of Jacob Black, and although this isn’t a plot hindrance in the first book, I suspect it may become so later on.

As a heroine, Bella is markedly different from those around her, both in her perceptions and actuality. Her internal monolouge describes her as feeling older, quieter, awkward, more distant than her teenage friends, contrasted with a childlike naivety when it comes to all things Edward. In actuality, Bella is, inded, different, but not in the way she imagines. Forks fits her like a glove, such that, despite her protestations, it’s hard to imagine her ever living boisterously in Phoenix under the hot sun, pale and quiet as she is. Indeed, presented with her physical appearance, preference for classical music and love of Jane Austen, one instinctively places Bella in an English locale: somewhere soft, green and glowing from frequent rain. It’s a measure of Meyer’s ability that she pulls off this deception with ease, allowing Bella’s self-perception to shield us from just how much she does, in fact, belong. This skillful tension permeates the narrative, and is arguably Twilight’s real heart – not romantically, but in terms of craftsmanship. It’s why the book works, and the reason it holds together: a solid sense of place.

The ending, however, troubled me, not only because it departed from that environment, but because Edward’s decision to save Bella undermined the entire narrative. In order to allow for even the barest physical interaction, Edward’s danger and ferocity are systematically blunted throughout the book, until it becomes difficult to believe they ever really existed. Similarly, his inner struggle to resist feeding on Bella has, by the end, vanished, such that the climactic moment of choice - to keep her human – poses neither threat nor tension. Over and over again, we have been told that Edward is dangerous to Bella without actually witnessing it; which suggests, ultimately, that he isn’t. Compare this to the turmoil of vampire Angel’s TV relationship with Buffy Summers. Admittedly, Buffy is significantly  stronger than Bella, such that Angel can physically attack her without killing her outright; nonetheless, it’s impossible to doubt his dark side. The same cannot be said of Edward Cullen.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Twilight. At its best, Meyer’s style is captivating, while the story flows steadily from outset to conclusion. Despite this, however, I don’t want to finish the saga. What made Twilight successful was its grounding in Forks, and the extent to which that environment was built, bones-up, to reflect Bella Swann. Outside those parameters and with Edward’s danger dissipated, the story can only be continued by making it more complicated, introducing new elements and moving the protagonists to new locations. At best, this style of serialising can make each successive volume a new first, with each story standing slightly apart from the others, unique despite a linear chronology. At worst, it devolves into the kind of add-on storytelling all too common in Hollywood sequals – notably Pirates of the Carribbean - in which a stand-alone first instalment is undermined by the introduction of a larger, unfamiliar world. The Twilight Saga will, I suspect, fall somewhere between these two points: Meyer has left enough undone to merit further exploration, but following through will invariably take the story away from what made it work in the first place, prolonging the initial catharsis by setting the characters on a largely circuitous route.

In fairness, I should read the rest of the series before passing final judgement; maybe Bella and Edward will pull the story through. Either way, Meyer isn’t the new Rowling, but that doesn’t stop her from being a skilled author in her own right, and certainly one worth keeping a careful eye on.

St Trinian’s

I wanted many things from the latest St Trinian’s adaptation – black humour, a visual hats-off to Ronald Searle, a vague resemblance to Timothy Shy’s book, knuckledusters – but mostly, given its abysmal 5.6 rating on IMDB, I wanted it not to suck. For this reason, it’s a film I’ve had to gear myself to see, bracing against every possible atrocity modern cinema could unleash on such an absurdly wonderful premise. Like a mantra of hope, I found myself muttering the names of Stephen Fry, Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, clinging to my conviction that, surely, no film featuring all three could fail utterly.

And you know what? I was right.

From the opening credits, St Trinian’s slams the audience into the world of Searle’s belovedly crazy schoolgirls and runs with riotous insanity through ten-year old twins with dynamite and a vodka distillery, Rupert Everett as an alcoholic headmistress hitting on Colin Firth, an art heist, Stephen Fry on drugs and hockey sticks akimbo. At times, it’s hysterical. The modern elements – such as emos, geeks, randy royals and YouTube pranks – all blend seamlessly with the original stock of violence, explosives, skulduggery and drunk teachers; so much so, in fact, that anyone not familiar with Searle’s comics could be forgiven for wondering just how many liberties had been taken.

In fact, the biggest weakness is character development. In order to keep the pace cracking, much has been sacrificed in the way of individual nuance, so that many girls are little more than names or distinctive faces. It’s hard to say whether this fact is worsened or ameliorated by the archetypes in play: the audience can still readily tell Chivas from Posh Totty, but the girls belonging to each group are deliberately bounded by these definitions, so that even though nothing is lost in translation, neither is anything gained. Still, it’s a flaw that sits well with the original material, given that Searle’s comics featured no recurring characters, and anyone familiar with Shy’s novella can spot La Umbrage in Everett’s persona, the sly minx in Kelly.

All in all, St Trinian’s is a rare and hilarious remake, one that sticks entirely to the spirit of the original without sacrificing modernity. Throw in an awesome soundtrack, and you’ve got a recipe for success. IMDB hath spoken wrongly: rent it and see for yourself!

The Gone-Away World

Best. Book. Ever.

That’s the short review. The long review, in which I mention not only the author (Nick Harkaway) but somewhat of the content, has just started. Thus:

The Gone-Away World is set in a post-apocalyptic, not-too-distant-but-slightly-parallel Earth. It is not exactly sci-fi, nor is it quite fantasy. Rather, it is speculative fiction in the fullest sense of the phrase: it speculates. Grandly. And it is fiction.

To say I enjoyed this book is an understatement of gross proportions, somewhat akin to describing Hiroshima as a power outage. Among other things, reading it by the photocopier contributed to my recent firing from a government bureaucracy – a pleasant irony, given what Chapter 1 has to say on the subject of pencilnecks. Having turned the last page less than an hour ago, I am therefore ideally placed to confirm that this is a book well worth getting fired over.

The chronology is interesting, and also highly effective. Imagine a linear narrative, its scenes labelled A to Z. Were you to pick up Scene R and place it carefully in front of Scene A, you’d have the right idea, as this is what Nick Harkaway has, in fact, done. In this respect, the structure is reminiscent of Memento: from an unconventional starting point, we travel back through the preceeding narrative in an orderly fashion, thence to discover the pivotal reason for said starting point. And this we do, with a hefty whack of brilliant, witty, outrageous, absurd, intriguing and above all entertaining sidenotes thrown in.

How, without ruining the book (and The Gone-Away World is not to be ruined lightly, or, for preference, at all) does one describe Wu Shenyang, Master of the Voiceless Dragon gong fu? Note – and this is important: Master Wu is not a ninja. Nor does Ronnie Cheung, foul-mouthed spirtual guardian and professional asshole, train ninjas. I will say no more. But read, and you will learn why.

I, geekily, am wont to describe the extreme cleverness of Harkaway’s writing in terms of other authors and their works – which is indulgent, as the man is clearly no mimic. Nonetheless: think Neil Stephenson and Cryptonomicon. Think Neil Gaiman and American Gods. Think Terry Pratchett and Night Watch. Think Jeeves and Wooster. Think the place between profundity and laughter. Think moments of awesome nerdity, heart-wrenching power and ripsnorting absurdity. Think lines, and the blurring of them. Think beauty.

By the photocopier, I cried. At home, I phoned my mother interstate to read her a passage, and laugh. It’s that kind of book. It’s hard to include my favourite moments here, although I’m sorely tempted. But like the gong fu of Wu Shenyang – and ultimately, the book itself – it’s about how you react. Sufficed to say that if a dialouge on exploding sheep, the Matahuxee Mime Combine, the ultimate in ninjas vs pirates and a man called Gonzo Lubitsch don’t whet your appetite, nothing will.

Trust me on this: just buy the damn book. Read it. Love it. Reccomend it to friends, relatives, co-workers and people you met at the pub. Then read it again. And so one day, when the list of Modern Classics is reappraised, there will be at least one book near the top that you read voluntarily, and loved, and get why it’s listed.

Really. It’s that sort of book.