Category Archives: Films

Of Time Lords, Trek and Thylacines

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Oscar Wilde wasn’t a science fiction fan as far as we know. I’m guessing he would be into the more character-driven stuff than nuts-and-bolts, if he were.

But he nailed fandom on the head very nicely:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

The kiss of death to any successful series is to let the fans get hold of it because they will love it to death, smothering any spontaneous creativity with layer upon layer of continuity, rigidly codifying throwaway one-off lines into immutable canon. Thus two 40-year-old TV series, Dr Who and Star Trek, which started in a blaze of unfettered creativity, were both nigh on unwatchable by the end. Star Trek in particular couldn’t run a single scene without a very comprehensive checklist of fan boxes being ticked.

(Dr Who was in almost continuous production from 1963-1989. Trek started later and was more on-and-off – but if you add the original series @ 3 years + 3 spinoffs @ 7 years each + 1 spin-off @ 4 years it actually beats the Doc. And that’s not to mention the 10 feature films.)

So when Dr Who was revived, Russell T Davies did it about the only way he could: after an unspecified period and number of regenerations had passed since the last outing, during which time the Time Lords and most established Who history had been wiped out and suddenly everything was up for grabs again. Sadly the initial impetus really hasn’t lasted – tendrils from the past began to reach across the gap almost at once and now the two are almost one again. All it will take will be the miraculous reappearance of the Time Lords – which would disappoint but not surprise me in the least – and the work will be complete.

I doubt JJ Abrams consulted Mr Davies, so his revival of Star Trek was done the same way Tasmanian Tigers looked like dogs. Convergent evolution in a similar environment. He starts at the beginning, he wipes out the Time Lords whoever and suddenly everything is up for grabs. Bonzer.

Yes, the film is fun – the best cinematic Trek offering for a long time. About a decade, in fact. That said, I hope it doesn’t spark a new series. Trek has reached retirement age. The Enterprise is snazzy, and respectful of the original design, and takes into account modern technology – inanimate surfaces suddenly providing computer interaction, for example. So it should keep everyone happy. But the days of a bridge full of personnel, even if they are all equipped with the latest Apple technology, staring earnestly at screens showing lots of stars are gone. I confidently expect that the order won’t be “set course of Delta Vega”, it will be “ship, we’d like to go to Delta Vega, please”. And the ship may need persuading. The future of starship navigation won’t be Sulu and Chekov, it will be Eddie the Shipboard Computer. Hi there!

(Why do they build starships in the middle of Iowa anyway? Wouldn’t orbit be more logical?)

The cast convincingly play young versions of the originals, especially McCoy, who lacks the southern accent but is still secure in the knowledge that he’s a damn good doctor and out of the line of command so he can say pretty well what he wants. The biggest exception, sadly, is Kirk, who has all Shatner’s cockiness but none of the charm that let him get away with it. And then almost every positive thing the film accomplishes is offset by the last five minutes in which the recently graduated Ensign Kirk gets given the Federation’s newest and best starship to command as a prize for saving the Earth, Oh, come on! That’s just insulting to the intelligence. A medal and a commendation, maybe, but then let him sweat his way up the ranks like everyone else. I bet he would be a really rubbish c/o to work under. Everyone’s pay would be months in arrears because he couldn’t be arsed to do the paperwork.

On the other hand, I will forgive just about any shortcomings for the throwaway line about Admiral Archer’s beagle.

The One with the Silly Title

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Quantum of Solace isn’t the worst Bond but it’s far from being the best. It’s far from being as good as Casino Royale. That one rightly won praise for re-inventing Bond. This one is … more of the same, really. The first one gave us mean, moody hurtin’ Bond. This comes perilously close to giving us Bond the Big Baby. Oh get over it, you want to cry out.
Let’s not be too negative; let’s talk strengths. Daniel Craig is still flippin’ good. Judi Dench is even better. Bond is just so beautifully irritating to the baddies. The bad guy isn’t a world-dominating ogre, just a well-acted bad guy; and like most bad guys, it wouldn’t actually make that much difference to the greater good of the greater whole if he won. But you’re glad he loses.
We get tantalising hints of the new Big Bad, Quantum, which might just might just possibly might be a SPECTRE for the twenty first century. And it will be interesting to see how well this films in Bolivia – or maybe they’ll dub the name of another country. Not many people want to be told their homeland is a corrupt coup-prone rat infested banana republic. Even if it’s true.
The fact that Bond doesn’t go to bed with Bond girl gives their relationship a sense of plausibility. Sadly said Bond girl has to be one of the densest of the lot, and frankly that’s pretty dense. Having ascertained that her boyfriend has sent an assassin after her, she twice confronts him in a situation that he completely controls and where he could quite easily have her killed without anyone batting an eyelid, and then acts surprised when – um – he tries to kill her. Pattern recognition not her strongest point.
And then there’s the fighting. Oh dear, the fighting.
Remember the fight between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love? It was gripping, brutal and to the death. 007 was up against someone who was at least his equal and you could believe (and you cared) that he might not make it (apart from the obvious given that he would make it – but it was fun to see how). Every blow, every shot counted. The camera often stayed stationary for seconds at a time. You could tell what was happening.
Three, four, five times QoS gives us an action scene so fast, furious and blurry you can’t (a) tell or (b) give a toss what’s happening. It’s a case of wake me up when Bond’s won and we’ll get on with the movie. At least one of the chases I could swear I’ve already seen, in the last Jason Bourne movie. Run across rooftops, check. Jump through windows, check. Perhaps the producer got confused.
Please will the producers and directors of thriller movies start trusting the intelligence of the audience again and give us scenes we can follow and care about. Thank you.
Here’s how fight scenes should be done.

Gregory and his girl

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For Saturday night’s viewing: Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). I’m still trying to decide if he cheated.
Spellbound stars an astonishingly young (29 years old) Gregory Peck as an amnesia case who may or may not have committed a murder, and Ingrid Bergman as the hypotenuse a psychoanalytic ice maiden who is thawed by his boyish good looks and determined to establish his innocence.
This contains no spoilers as all of the above becomes clear very early on. Many of Hitchcock’s films have an innocent man, wrongly accused, trying to clear his name. This is a slight variation in that we don’t actually know the accused man is innocent – but if you have a reasonable grasp of movie conventions, and trust Ingrid Bergman’s ability to pick the right guy without hesitation, and cannot possibly conceive of Gregory Peck as a baddie (except in The Boys from Brazil, where he is brilliant as Josef Mengele) then you can take a fair stab in the dark.
The difference is that in films like The 39 Steps and the mighty North by Northwest the innocent man goes to a lot of time and effort to find out what is really happening. Spellbound is unusual in that the final revelation comes through a dream, to which Ingrid Hypotenuse applies her superior psychoanalytic skills to establish the truth.
Apparently Hitchcock was ordered by the studio head to make a film about psychoanalysis, and he duly complied. He wasn’t too fond of it himself and described it as “just another manhunt wrapped up in pseudo-psychoanalysis”.
But like all good Hitchcock, it’s still worth watching. You see little quirks and techniques that you barely notice nowadays, and realise he was the first to think of them. The background music is an orchestra complemented with a theremin; this is one of the films that pioneered electronic instruments to create atmosphere. The piece de resistance is the dream sequence itself, shot on a set designed by Salvador Dali.
So here it is.