No surprises here

For health reasons, I came in late to my film lecture on Monday to avoid as much of the agony that is Sleepless in Seattle as I could.

Who did I find in the corridor hunched over his laptop constructing PowerPoint slides?

The Head Fascist!

Of course he would be rushing to assemble what, naturally, turned out to be a particularly half-assed and rambling lecture in the moments before he was due to deliver it. Being properly prepared would be too likely to result in the professional delivery of something actually useful.

Having experienced the hashed result, I couldn’t possibly conclude that he perhaps works best under pressure.  I’m more inclined to just chalk this up to further evidence of laziness.

Of course, he also announced to no body’s surprise, I’m sure, that the latest essay topics he’d promised to have to us would be delayed another week, for reasons not cited.

Communism was just a red herring

I am a great fan of the Cluedo board game.

The film version from 1985 calls it Clue.

Maybe it’s like “Where’s Wally” versus “Where’s Waldo“?

Anyway, I just saw the film, Clue, tonight and it is… wonderful.

Tim Curry plays the butler. Everyone is (possibly) the murderer, in any room, with all weapons, where several murders take place although the central one is that of Mr Boddy. And it has three possible endings, which on DVD are selected at random. Or you can choose to play all three consecutively.

It’s camp, delicious, hilarious, inviting, fan-boyish, and it leaves me wishing I had the game at hand.

Disproportionate

I’ve speant a number of hours on my first essay for FILM234, my first uni paper in a couple of years.

I tell you, it’s quite tricky getting back into the swing of academic writing after time away, focusing on other (more actively creative) written forms.

I’ve actually enjoyed the wider reading and the application of critical thought, and it hasn’t even ruined the two favourite films I’ve used for the essay (being The Mask and Interview with the Vampire—come on, it’s a contemporary Hollywood paper).

But all this readjustment and uncertainty has resulted, I feel, in a product that is disprortiante to the effort involved in producing it.

Oh well. Results are yet to be independently verified.

Dot, dot, dot…

The Man Who Fell to Earth

They sure did some crazy things back in the 70s.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like being on serious narcotics or to see David Bowie’s penis (or, alternatively, wanted to know what he looks like as a sexless, hairless, cat-eyed alien), then rent this title.

Cautionary note: have a bottle of wine on hand. It’ll help wash the film down.

Armageddon

Apple won a double pass to the Armageddon Expo. So, we figured we may as well give it a go. Free is free, right?

The tragedy began outside the venue, where a bunch of young adults (or old children) were dressed up as superheroes, one of them heroically climbing, fist over fist, up a length of steel rope, above his applauding friends.

Sadly, no greater tragedy took place. He did not fall and break a limb or even scrape his knee.

Inside the venue, it was pretty much an onslaught of such costumed fanatics.

Some kudos deserves to go out to those whose costumes were very intricate and well put together. But then, that kudos (and more) deserves to be ripped right away again when you consider just how sad it is. It’s excusable when you’re aged 7 or so and prone to indulgent and imitative fantasies.

But for mid-teens, late-teens, and especially twenty-somethings and above – one feels like taking them by the shoulders, slapping their poorly made-up faces and saying, “Snap out of it, goddammit, get a life – you are not the Joker, OK?”

I felt a bit sorry for the quasi-quasi celebrities too. Not even in this niche environment of hardcore nerds could they garner much interest. For the most part, they just rocked back and forth in their chairs, below dramatic posters of themselves, a numbing boredom overtaking them.

The chairs of Michael Winslow and Michael Hurst had been abandoned. A shame, since Winslow actually might have been cool to say hi too, the Police Academy films being somewhat significant comedies from my youth.

Of course, the fanatics and  F-grade celebs are just what makes Armageddon the despairingly hilarious time that it is.

The expo did remind me to pick up Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series at some point too…

Watching the…

I trundled along to the cinema this afternoon, a little bored and looking for distraction. Watchmen was playing in 50 minutes time, so I bought a ticket and proceeded to become casually excited.

Casually exciting is about as good as this film gets. It certainly couldn’t keep my arse awake, and my legs also required constant shifting.

It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t anywhere near as good as the comics/graphic novel.  Which was expected. The source material was denounced un-filmable for good reason. It’s an incredibly complex piece that deserves to be poured over. As a film, there’s little room for such pondering. I’m all for complex narratives and well-crafted characters. Thinking while viewing is a good thing. But what happens is that some of the book’s most beautiful (and ponderous) moments, of which there are plenty, do not (because they can not) translate well to the constantly moving image.

The comic’s images were bold and poetic, but never flashy. The film often is. It accurately renders the comics’ elements into live action terms. But, for the most part, it lacks the same delicacy.

Terry Gilliam once said that Watchmen, if filmed, would best be done as a mini-series. He’s not wrong. The book is a detailed, intricate inspection of the lives of some pretty interesting, and often pretty fucked up, masked crusaders and the very real world in which they exist. It has  a heck of a lot to say. And while the big screen rendering delivers the flash and the bang, it fails to deliver much of the intimacy.

Go along, if you want to see just how cool the Owl Ship would look if it really existed. The same goes for the characters – they’re well cast.* And do go along for the change in the ending. If there is one thing the filmmakers have done well, it’s altering the final outcome to something a lot tidier and self-contained than what happens in the comics.

*The only let down is Ozymandias. He’s just a wimpy twink with a funny nose.