Films: Fantastic Mr Fox

Here we have Wes Anderson, the smugly esoteric and existential American film-maker, wrestling with the ghost of Roald Dahl, the charmingly eccentric and child-like English author, over the spirit of Fantastic Mr Fox.

Wes Anderson wins hands down. This is not a children's film. It's not even a good grown-up's film, unless you like Anderson's noodly, wishy-washy, robotic style (I don't). If the direction, script and acting weren't enough, any chance of avoiding complete disappointment is scuppered by the decision to animate the story using what appears to be a set of slightly mangy Sylvanian Families. (2/10)

Books: The elephant vanishes

As someone who has adored most everything that I've read of Haruki Murakami, I found this collection of his short stories terribly disappointing. Perhaps it's the fact that, although everything Murakami writes is opaque, and much is unresolved, these aspects seem to have been magnified, and made problematic, by the short story form.

If a novel ends obscurely, one can take comfort from the tales told along the way, the characters one gets to know, and the themes that come out of the writing. In The elephant vanishes, everything is unfinished, every story is unsatisfying, and the book feels like a string of non sequiturs, with nothing whatsoever to grab hold of.

Added to this, the stories collected here were all written in the first half of Murakami's career, perhaps before his skills as an author really developed. Indeed, the first story of the collection was later reused, and certainly improved upon, as the first chapter of The wind-up bird chronicle. The wind-up bird is a novel that everyone should read as an introduction to Murakami; The elephant vanishes is only for the completist. (06/10)

Films: Red River

As someone who has never seen a Western from start to finish, Red River seems like an excellent introduction to the genre. The treasure of the Sierra Madre is the closes I've come, but unlike that film, Red River is no simple morality tale. It's the story of a cattle farmer forced to lead his vast herd half-way across America in order to sell them, contending with rain and stampedes and indians and dwindling food all along the way.

John Wayne plays the lead, not as a heroic figure, but as a determined man losing his humanity as the obstacles mount up. The men who join Wayne on the road are a varied, well-written bunch of characters, who bring humour, humanity and tension to the story. Montgomery Clift stands out as a young man, raised by Wayne, allied to him, but not subservient, who comes to understand that his father figure is losing his grip on sanity. Human moments playing out against an epic back-drop led me to enjoy Red River far, far more than I was expecting to. (8/10)

Films: Up

The thing that marks Pixar out, it seems to me, is their ambition. There is an enormous glut of animated movies aimed at children these days, all striving to make the whole family laugh and to take the audience on a seat-of-their pants adventure. Most fall short of these goals. Very occasionally a fantastic Dreamworks picture will come out that is genuinely funny and exciting (Cloudy with a chance of meatballs and Kung Fu Panda are the two worth seeking out), but only Pixar dares to take things further. Because Up, which follows a retired old man and an over-eager young boy as they journey off in a floating house for a Roald Dahl-ian adventure in South America, is incredibly fun and funny, fast-paced and stylish, but is also sad and touching, even heart-breakingly so, in a way that kids films almost never get near. (10/10)

Books: The death of grass

Too often I find myself plodding through the second half of a book, still enjoying it, but looking forward to moving on to something else. The death of grass (John Christopher) on the other hand is a novel whose only flaw is that it doesn't go on long enough.

Written in the 1950s when memories of WWII were still fresh and cold war paranoia was in its infancy, The death of grass begins with two English brothers taking very different paths. One opts for the life of a farmer, inheriting and working the farm that's been in their family for years. The other moves to London and builds a life as an architect, with a loving wife and two kids. And then, as the story starts, the world ends. What looks at the outset to be some sort of family saga, rapidly descends into the starkest, most uncompromising, post-apocalyptic struggle for survival that I think I've ever read or seen.

What is so wonderful about this slim book is that it acheives a perfect balance of page-turning, locomotive plot with thoughtful insight into the nature of man. This is what all science ficition should be. Just how flimsy is the cloak of civilisation that we all stride around believing in so completely? How will we react if the next bird flu or swine flu turns out to be the big one? How will we be forced to act?

The story is told economically, at a break-neck pace, and this is good in so many ways, but sadly it does mean that there's little time for the characters to really reflect on their actions. And this is such a shame. Because apart from this ever-so-slight flaw The death of grass is one of the best books I've read all year. (9/10)

Films: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

In Vicky Cristina Barcelona (d. Woody Allen), two American friends fall for the same seductive, unconventional, uninhibited Spanish painter, but neither can compete with his violently passionate and slightly unhinged ex-wife when she reappears on the scene. Allen makes beautiful films, and though this one is far less funny than most he is known for, it is no less insightful or engaging.

A meditation on love in all its forms, Vicki Cristina Barcelona is powered by a couple of memorable, charismatic performances from Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, and is well worth seeking out. (7/10)

Films: The invention of lying

The invention of lying (d. Matthew Robinson & Ricky Gervais) is a film based around a single idea: in a world where everyone tells the truth, one man discovers how to lie. Initially, this concept is played for laughs; hearing people say what they really think is funny, and it suits Gervais's comedy-of-embarrassment to a tee. The little details that flesh out this world, like the way advertising is transformed when exaggeration and embellishment are impossible, also work very well.

But this film has more going for itself than simple comedy. When Gervais speaks, people believe him. And when his mother is dying (in a moving scene that shows just how versatile Gervais can be) he can't bare for her to pass away believing that all she has to look forward to is an eternity of nothing. So he invents heaven.

And from this point onward, the humour takes a back-seat as issues of conformity and the need for religion, begin to be explored. The film has been criticised for not being funny enough, but I think that is to miss the point. It is funny, but it's not an out-and-out comedy, and isn't meant to be. Taken on its own terms, this is a thoughtful, wry, bittersweet movie, that just happens to have more than a few lines that will make you laugh out loud at their audacity. (8/10)

TV: I, Claudius

I, Claudius, produced by the BBC back in the 1970s, often seems to be cited as the high water-mark of television drama, so I've been curious for a while to see what it's like. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out not to be a patch on the best that TV has to offer today.

What did surprise me is that the problem is not with the production values. Everyone talks about the wobbly sets, and the crowd scenes made up of three men with a pitchfork, but this didn't bother me for a moment. The sets are actually very good, and although they mostly get out of showing large crowds, this is done artfully, and is all but unnoticeable.

The problem, as with Smiley's people, is chiefly the pacing. Though not nearly as turgid as the aforementioned spy thriller, there just isn't enough drama or fast-paced dialogue to hold one's attention. There are dozens of classic actors peppered throughout the series (which chronicles the life of the Emperor Claudius of Rome and takes in Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula along the way), but many play their roles as so theatrical and broad that it's difficult to buy into the reality of the scene.

As a bit of a Roman history geek, I was interested enough to follow the series through to the end, but stacked up against The wire, The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, or The West Wing, I, Claudius comes off looking old fashioned and more than a little stagy. (7/10)

TV: Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.5

Well, it's over. I can imagine that in twenty year's time a whole generation of geeks will be united by the memory of this summer, spent wondering who the final cylon would turn out to be. Battlestar Galactica finished up with the second part of Season 4, and it was a pretty decent ending. A little slow and ponderous in parts, gripping and fascinating in others. The final episode was action packed, in a way that I was never sure it would be, and also touching, which I did expect, of course.

What's more, the many mysteries raised over the course of the series were revealed in a startlingly spiritual climax. At its best, Battlestar Galactica has always been a show that addressed difficult issues - much of the middle part of the storyline cast the cylons in the role of an occupying force and the humans as an insurgent resistance in a clear, and controversial parallel of the Iraq war. Afterwards, issues of collaboration and of segregation were explored unflinchingly and unsentimentally. And without wanting to spoil too much, the conclusion of the final season hinges on the intervention of the divine in our characters' lives, making the show unequivocally theistic, in a way few are in this sceptical age. Literally a deus ex machina ending.

Beginning with a no-holds-barred mutiny, and finishing up with revelations and Revelation, this turned out to be an absolutely satisfying, fitting, and nail-biting conclusion to Battlestar Galactica. (8/10)

TV: Smiley's people

Smiley's people is a six-part drama from the early '80s, adapted from the novel by John Le Carre, and large sections of it are mind-bendingly dull. Many worthy actors, including Alec Guinness, Beryl Reid and Patrick Stewart assemble for a cold war thriller that has Guinness' George Smiley investigating the death of a Russian general on British soil.

It's a promising start. Unfortunately, Smiley's investigation is so drawn-out, so tediously paced, that it literally sent me to sleep. More than once. In one episode, Smiley visits only four potential leads, which means four conversations, four scenes, in a 50 minute episode. Four, twelve-minute, two person conversations between the terse Smiley and his equally downbeat 'people'. I'm prepared to accept that our attention spans may have shortened a little in the last two decades, but this is simply astonishing.

In the last episode everything falls into place and the pace moves from a crawl to a brisk walk. There's an interesting story here, but one that is sadly smothered by the worst visual story-telling I think I've ever seen. (5/10)

Films: Don't look now

A child dies, her parents grieve, and a year later are in Venice, trying to put the past behind them. Don't look now (d. Nicolas Roeg) uses every trick in the film-maker's book to keep the audience off-balance and unsettled as Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie obsess over their child, convinced that her presence lingers with them, her red-coated form emerging from within the Venetian fog as an omen of death. (7/10)

Books: The girls

The girls (Lori Lansens) is about a pair of conjoined twins growing up in small-town Canada, and it is very much a 'girls' book, it seems to me. It is one of those, like The time-traveller's wife or My sister's keeper, that is more interested in making you say "isn't that sad?", than "isn't that interesting?". It's the least sensational story about two girls joined at the head that you could imagine, focusing instead on how the pair overcome their difficulties and try to live a normal life. Not that there's anything wrong in a book striving to be uplifting, but The girls was just a little too earnest and home-spun and rose-tinted for me to be able to love it. (7/10)

Books: The dark heart of Italy

The dark heart of Italy was written by Tobias Jones, who lived in Italy as a journalist for years, and wanted to shed light on the hidden aspects of modern-day Italy that are too easily ignored by those looking only for good food, history, and beautiful landscapes. Jones writes about the Italian obsession with beauty, not as a good thing, but as a cultural imperative to focus on the surface of things and not investigate too deeply. He talks about the soul-crushing bureaucracy, and general sense that a little light fraud is not immoral, but simply a fact of life. And he talks about politics and the rise of Berlosconi (although the book was written ten years ago, everything in it matches up eerily well with the news coming out of the country today).

For parts of the book it seems as though Berlusconi is the direct descendant of Mussolini - that Fascism is alive and well in Italy even now. But the final conclusion is perhaps even more disturbing; Jones's suggestion is that Fascism implies an ethos, a belief, however disgusting, but that Berlusconi believes in nothing at all, and has no motivation other than the personal accrual of power and influence.

All this is fascinating stuff, and it may sound as though I was rather keen on the book. Unfortunately, the way the story is told is quite dry (far from the laugh-a-minute tone that the cover implies), and as interesting as parts of it are, much of the book is a turgid history lesson full of obscure names and places that fail to make much of an impact. Well worth skimming through for the good bits, but quite a bit more editing would have been nice. (5/10)

Films: Rope

It's quite evident from early on that Rope (d. Alfred Hitchcock) is an adaptation of a stage play. The entire 90 minute piece takes place in a single room, a New York apartment looking out over the city, where two over-privileged, over-educated young men decide to strangle their friend and hold a dinner party while his body molders in a chest. But in constraining the location of the movie so tightly, Hitchcock's directorial genius is highlighted more here than in any other film of his that I've seen.

Far from feeling static or drab, as stage adaptations often can, Rope is alive with tension and playfulness. Just as the supercilious murderer toys with his guests and revels in his own amorality, so Hitchcock carefully orchestrates the sound design, camera placement and actors in order to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and firmly in the palm of his hand. An arresting concept played out with a deft and darkly comic touch, Rope is one to seek out. (8/10)

Film: The proposition

The proposition (d. John Hillcoat) is a grimy Australian 'western', set in the outback in the 1880s. It's a nihilistic revenge story, full of blood and damnation, whose characters face grim choices and an unforgiving life with stoicism and determination. Unfortunately this unremitting bleakness gets pretty one-note after a while and, without a little light to balance out the dark, left me feeling drained, rather than entertained. (6/10)

TV: The wire, Season 5

It's impossible to ignore the fact that the 5th season of The wire, its last season, is also its weakest. Everyone says so, and it's true. But that absolutely mustn't detract from the fact that even a sub-par season of this show is truly amazing. More engaging, more moving, more important than almost anything else on television.

The problems stem from the central storyline of Season 5, which brings a new cohort of characters into the show, using the journalists of the Baltimore Sun newspaper to shed light on what does and doesn't get reported in the decaying cities of America. These characters are entertaining enough, but one in particular is just a little too obviously villainous to sit easily in the world of the Wire, which has always been about shades of grey, rather than black-hats and white-hats. Over in the police department, this lapse in writing is mirrored, as a number of established characters cross over the line of verisimilitude and begin acting like television characters furthering a plot, instead of the utterly believable figures they've been until now.

But enough of that. The fact is that the majority of the cast and storylines we've been following for five years are well served here, with twists and turns that fit beautifully with what's gone before. The way Omar's storyline ends, one of the most popular characters on the show, is so perfect, and would never, ever have played out the same way on any other programme. Every character who's played a major part in the story is returned to, and their resolutions are note perfect. The final episode is certainly the best conclusion to any long-running series that I can think of, which is no mean feat given how hard it is to get an ending right. The bitter and the sweet are perfectly balanced and I find myself watching those closing minutes over and over again, with a smile on my face and a lump in my throat. (9/10)

Books: The secret scripture

The secret scripture (Sebastian Barry) is a novel whose central thesis seems to be that every narrator is unreliable thanks to the subjectivity of memory, and that therefore, how can we ever trust history?

The story of the book is the story of Roseanne, an Irish woman in her 100s who has spent the latter half of her life detained in an asylum. She writes about her childhood and her father and how they got mixed up in the beginning of the troubles, about her ill-fated marriage, and eventually about the reason for her incarceration. (Anyone who knows anything about the asylums of the early 20th Century can probably guess that reason from the synopsis). As the novel progresses it becomes clear that some of Roseanne's testimony of her life may be faulty, but it's hard to take too much away from that, given her age and circumstance.

The book is partially set during the upheavals in Ireland of the 1920s and 1930s, something I know little about and about which I would be interested to learn. Unfortunately, Barry assumes that the reader understands the background already, or doesn't care to explain it, and so I came away no wiser than I was going in. The story is told without any trace of humour, but rather with a leaden, dreary tone, and to make matters worse, this unexceptional tale concludes with a quite preposterous twist ending. Writing a novel that concerns itself exclusively with character and theme, and then plucking an ending out of the nearest soap opera, seems to betray a lack of confidence on the part of the author. (3/10)

Films: The shining

Despite having seen many of the classic scenes from The shining (d. Stanley Kubrick), either from clips or pastiches (like the superb first episode of Spaced, the film still manages to impress. The story, of course, follows Stephen King's novel about a man who signs up to take care of a sprawling hotel during the snowed-in winter season. Taking his family along with him, Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson), goes increasingly stir-crazy and eventually flips out completely, perhaps influenced by the ghosts of tragedies past.

Under Kubrick's direction the film starts out unsettling and grows increasingly tense until the final "here's Johnny!" homicidal mayhem erupts. (8/10)

Films: Bruno

Sacha Baron-Cohen's follow-up to Borat, Bruno (d. Larry Charles) follows the title character, an absurdly camp Austrian fashionista, as he tours America, leaving a trail of offended, angry Americans in his wake.

Bruno is extremely explicit, outrageous and very, very funny. Without the Pamela Anderson subplot that dragged Borat down, Bruno is a better film, which, like it's predecessor, hides just a little bit of a message or two behind all the laughs. (7/10)

Films: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I think that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (d. David Yates) is a film that will live or die according to whether you have read the book. As the Harry Potter novels have gotten fatter, so the film-makers have had to struggle more and more to work out what to cut. And whereas previous films have held together well, losing only padding and detail, The Half-Blood Prince suffers terribly from the editors' red pen, and disintegrates into a mess of plot-holes and confusion for those (like me) unfamiliar with the story.

Having said that, there is a huge amount to love about this instalment. It's probably the best looking of all the Harry Potter films, shot with beautiful, desaturated photography that make it look strikingly like an art film at times. It's also very funny, and the awkward teenage romances that occupy most of the first half of the film are sweet and realistic and engaging. Sadly, the plot itself stalls and skips gears and eventually putters out with a whimper and a lot of head-scratching from the uninitiated. I'm sure that those who can use the book to plug those gaps will have a very fine time indeed. (6/10)

Films: The Incredible Hulk

One of the nice things about superhero comics that hasn't really made it to the big screen is their interconnectedness. In the comics, Superman and Batman know each other, they have a guarded friendship and a history going back decades, a history that they share with countless other heroes and villains. I'd never claim that individual comic-books are particularly deep or challenging, but taken together they build into a rich and complex tapestry, which is very appealing. Until recently, the screen versions of comic-book heroes have stood alone, but now, at last, Marvel is beginning to realise the potential of this shared universe.

The Incredible Hulk (d. Louis Leterrier) is nothing special in itself. It's fun, and far pacier then the Ang Lee version, and there are a few nice references to the 70s tv show, but it's not a patch on the recent Iron Man. That film had a sharper script, and a level of exuberance in the cast and direction that shone through. The Incredible Hulk should be seen though, for the very fact that it exists in the same world as Iron Man. The two films intertwine and lay the groundwork for an ongoing series of films that will eventually bring these two heroes together with others like Thor and Captain America in an eventual Avengers team-up to be released in 2012. It should be quite something to see, assuming the film-makers can pull it off. (6/10)

TV: The thick of it

The thick of it is a short-lived British television comedy that follows an inept Government minister and his run-ins with the party spin doctor. Peter Capaldi steals the show as the vituperative hatchet-man, who terrifies MPs and civil servants alike with his venomous, unforgiving attacks should they step out of line and draw the attention of the press.

Almost the anti-West Wing, The thick of it lifts the curtains on the venality and weasellyness of politics and politicians, and manages to raise a laugh or two in the process. More uncomfortable than funny, perhaps, although Capaldi's creatively sweary put-downs are worth the price of the DVD alone. (6/10)

Films: The wrestler

I wonder if there are those out there who haven't bothered to watch Darren Aronofsky's The wrestler because they're not interested in wrestling? I hope there aren't, but I fear that there probably are. To those people: you must see this film.

The movie is an unvarnished, sympathetic portrait of a man who defines himself by his work, who sacrifices everything, including family and self-respect, for his career. The wrestler, like the sportsman, the prostitute or the actress, is valued for their body, their physicality, their public persona... but when these things get stripped away, what is left of the person? Randy 'The Ram' Robinson is 20 years past his hayday, but he still lives there, in his head. The wrestler is about what happens when Randy is finally forced to confront his present.

A funny, thoughtful, flawless film about a funny, thoughtful, exceptionally flawed man. (10/10)

Meme: Sticky books

A tag doing the rounds:

"Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

The Just So Stories (1902)
Peter Pan (1911)
A Handful of Dust (1934)
The Stars My Destination (1955)
Cerebus (1977)
Midnight's Children (1981)
The Neverending Story (1983)
Geek Love (1989)
The First Man in Rome (1990)
Red Mars (1992)
Of Love and Other Demons (1994)
A Game of Thrones (1996)
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1997)
Stardust (1998)
Ghostwritten (2001)


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Books: Metropole

Metropole (Ferenc Karinthy) is more like a thought-experiment than a novel. What would a city be like if no-one could ever leave it? If the population grew, but had nowhere to grow into? And what would it be like to visit such a place as an outsider, with no understanding of the language, no knowledge of the culture, and no way to make oneself understood?

I found Karinthy's writing particularly effective at drawing me into this nightmarish world, and found myself overcome with sensations of claustrophobia. In fact I became noticeably more paranoid during the reading of the book. Unfortunately, that isn't really what I want from a novel.

As the book began I felt sure that it wouldn't be possible to sustain the story of a man failing to escape from this impersonal metropolis for a full 250 pages. But I was wrong. Instead of gradually amassing clues, learning how to converse with the natives, and eventually discovering where he is and how to leave, the central character simply fails and fails and fails and fails. This is an atmospheric, intriguing book, but one in which absolutely nothing happens. (4/10)