Four Lions

A comedy about suicide bombers. It's not an idea you expect to see made into a theatrically-released film, nor would you expect it go by without some measure of controversy, but Four Lions manages both of these feats - a living, breathing testament to Western society's mostly undemonstrated ability to treat such a subject in a mature and intelligent fashion. This goes both for the film itself and for the predominantly positive reactions from critics and filmgoers.

Confusingly, the 'four lions' of the title are actually five to begin with... a disparate bunch of disallusioned muslims living in modern England, and working together as an inept terrorist cell. Omar (Riz Ahmed) gets a call from his 'uncle' to travel to Pakistan and train with the muhajadeen. He couldn't be more excited, for his little group of wannabes it's a tremendous opportunity, but the trip goes horribly wrong and neither Omar or his dopey offsider Waj (Kavyan Novak) are accepted into the elite terrorist force. Omar returns home and decides to take charge of his cell regardless of the failure and the five of them start planning a suicide attack together... a tragedy waiting to happen if they can ever navigate they way through a sea filled with their own idiocy, misconceptions, personal vendettas and disagreements.

The main anyone will be thinking when they watch this film is: just how offensive will it be? Amazingly, despite some very black humour, the film doesn't come across as offensive at all. Due to writer-director Chris Morris' heavy degree of research the script has a ring of authenticity about it despite the sometimes ridiculous nature of the characters and the situations they get themselves into. Everything about this film is incredibly well thought out, it doesn't make light of terrorism by taking any easy options, nor does it use shock-factor comedy to push the audience's buttons. The humour comes from the backwards and bizarre attitudes of these characters.

There's this expectation in the Western world that suicide bombers are fundamentalists; Islamic warriors sent forth as an advance party for a full scale Islamic invasion. But this simply just isn't the case. As David Hicks, Anders Breivik and Timothy McVeigh have demonstrated, the more likely scenario behind terrorism in Western countries is for it to be the result of sad, ignorant, disturbed or misled individuals with various unstable elements in their lives (be it family, community, health, etc). The 'lions' in the title is an ironic label, the guys in this film are just regular British Yorkshire Muslims who buy into a fantasy because their own lives are deficient in some way.

Unfortunately, governments find it hard to sell international wars to their constituents if terrorism in the West is shown to be fuelled by crackpots rather than fundamentalists, so we don't get a lot of exposure to this idea in the media. This is what makes Four Lions such a golden and unique film. It doesn't generalise, and it doesn't scapegoat, nor does it let anyone off the hook. Nothing is safe from ridicule... I loved Omar's deeply religious brother, the film doesn't take the usual Liberal viewpoint that religions other than Christianity should somehow be safe from satire. Also, each of the five would-be martyrs are all representative of different kinds of Islamic terrorists. All too often the Western media tars these terrorists with the same brush as blanket fanatics, failing to come to any understanding of what lies behind this behaviour in order to continue fuelling the public's fear. There's Omar, who wants to be a hero for his family; Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), quiet and brainwashed by his father's medieval opinions; Waj, too simple-minded to make his own decisions, Hassan (Arsher Ali), a bored youth who gets bullied into it; and Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a white convert to Islam who's dangerously self-conscious about his general ignorance. Barry is easily the best character - a hothead who's eager to blame the West (and Jews) for all his problems. I couldn't help but laugh whenever his car broke down and he blamed it on the Jews, or his tenacious refusal to give up the 'revolutionary' idea of bombing a mosque to start a holy war.

This is both a brilliant comedy and a brilliant film. Some of it gets a little uncomfortable and I was surprised by how far it went down the rabbit hole in order to sell its convictions to the audience, but I think Four Lions will one day be viewed as a landmark film for using humour to deconstruct and defuse the very essence of terrorism. One of the best films of 2010.

DIRECTOR: Chris Morris
WRITER/SOURCE: Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain and Simon Blackwell.
KEY ACTORS: Riz Ahmed, Adeel Akhtar, Nigel Lindsay, Arsher Ali, Kavyan Novak, Preeya Kalidas, Benedict Cumberbatch

RELATED TEXTS:
- Jihad Satire is a small subsection of political satire that works to take the mickey out of Islamic terrorism. So far there aren't really any other major works that do this other than Four Lions, though the Edinborough Comedy Festival did feature a show in 2007 called Jihad! The Musical.
- Chris Morris is an actor-writer who only recently branched out into filmmaking. He appeared in the first two series of The I.T. Crowd as a recurring castmember, and co-wrote the satirical sitcom Nathan Barley. He got his start prior to this working on the current affairs parodies The Day Today and Brass Eye.
- The topical and fearless nature of the satire in Four Lions has been compared to Dr Strangelove. See also the more political (and less controversial) films In the Loop, Wrong is Right and Wag the Dog.

AWARDS
BAFTAs - won Best Debut. Also nominated for Best Film.
Sundance Festival - nominated Grand Jury Prize.

Field Guide to Australian Mammals

Field guides for birds seem to be everywhere and I think it's fair to say that there are far more bird-watching groups then there are groups for watching any other kind of animal (that's if any other kind of animal-watching groups do indeed exist!) And whilst I'm interested in birds, my primary interest in animals has always been mammals and when I was younger I was always annoyed at the apparent lack of field guides for Australian mammals.

Well, since those days I've become a bit more savvy in the world of books and I've noticed that there are more than a few such guides for observing and identifying Australian mammals in the field. I finally bought one such guide last week after much deliberating (these guides aren't cheap, they're usually around $40 to $50). I think this guide, the Oxford second edition, is probably the best of the lot.

Well, since those days I've become a bit more savvy in the world of books and I've noticed that there are more than a few such guides for observing and identifying Australian mammals in the field. I finally bought one such guide last week after much deliberating (these guides aren't cheap, they're usually around $40 to $50). I think this guide, the Oxford second edition, is probably the best of the lot.

Now, as I said, I've looked at a few guides on Australian mammals but I didn't really like any of them except for this one. The other main mammal field guide that seems to be available in most bookstores has photographs for each mammal... I actually prefer illustrations. There's something about photographs that make it hard to tell certain species apart, there's always a shadow somewhere that obscures some detail or the angle of the photo doesn't do the animal justice when you're trying to spot it in the bush or something. This Oxford guide has illustrations, which I think makes it easier - as the differences are clearer between species, they're all drawn in profile so you can compare them, and there aren't any dodgy shadows to be seen.

This field guide is also handy as it covers every mammal you could possibly see in Australia. All the marsupials, monotremes and native mice, rats and bats are present, along with every seal and whale species one could possibly sight from our shores. It even details the various feral animals that have taken up residence here since European settlement and lists a few recently extinct mammals in the hope that there might still be a few rogue living specimens as yet un-spotted.

As can be expected from a field guide, it shows the distribution of each mammal in Australia, talks about their appearance in detail, their behaviour and the likelihood of seeing them in certain areas. It also, where neccessary, shows diagrams of their feet/footprints or droppings for help in identifying the tracks and trails of certain species. Very useful!

So, if you've read this far and haven't been completely bored to death by my description of this field guide, I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning the names of native mammals that they might spot in their backyard and beyond. Have fun.

The Hidden Fortress

"We can rely on their greed. Make them carry gold and they'll put up with anything"

Akira Kurosawa's Hidden Fortressis a samurai epic of three battle warlords told from a worm's eye view. Taking a fairly typical tale of heroism and honour in feudal Japan, Kurosawa tells his story via the perspectives of two colourfully pathetic characters - Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara). These two beggar-peasants are cowardly opportunists, always bickering as they navigate their way through two lands locked in war. It's an interesting storytelling device in that the primary plot of a samurai (Toshiro Mifune) smuggling a hunted princess (Misa Uehara) to safety starts out as a subplot, with events reflecting through the misadventures of Tahei and Matashichi, who unwittingly find themselves tied to the fate of the princess and her protector.

The hidden fortress of the title is the last stronghold of Akizuki clan, tucked away between some mountains and discovered by our antiheroes as they scavenge for loot. They meet Rokurota (Mifune), a samurai general who decides to use the two fools to help him save his clan's leader, the Princess Yuki. A lot of the film is initially told from the perspective of Tahei and Matashichi; the hero and heroine are introduced to us seperately through the eyes of these two lowly sidekicks. It's a different way to tell a familiar story, the effectiveness of which helps reinforce the heroic qualities of Rokurota and the Princess as we see the strength of their characters in sharp contrast to by Tahei and Matashichi. The first scene we get outside of Tahei and Matashichi's POV comes around the 50 minute mark, and it's a memorable shift in tone that finally lets the audience in on the dramatic thrust of a traditional hero's quest. The rest of the film features this motley group of characters working together but towards different ends - the peasants want to escape with the gold, whereas Rokurota is on a more noble mission.


The strength of the adventure also lies in the fine performances and great characters... Mifune leads the cast as Rokurota, a born leader reduced by circumstances. He's clever enough to make do with the paltry tools he's left with, and this means manipulating the two peasants into helping save the Princess. The depth of his loyalty to the Princess means that he even sends his own sister to be executed in her place, and his fearsomeness is palpable in the scenes where he runs down two soldiers on horseback, holding his sword aloft. The Princess is a great character too... she's had a privileged and sheltered life, and through this adventure she learns what the outside world is really like. In her disguise as a mute she is also able to observe the true nature of everyday people for the first time, and Uehara gives a realistically understated performance that hammers home the character's inner nobility. Of course, we shouldn't forget the peasants either - two wonderfully over-the-top sidekicks brought to centrestage. Comical and greedy, suspicious and hopeless. They also get all the best lines...

"Don't touch me fool, I'm uncomfortable enough"
"It's your face that makes me uncomfortable"

Hidden Fortress shouldn't be dismissed as just a superficial exercise in perspective either. Kurosawa's editing prowess ensures fluid and entertainingly concise methods of storytelling. Such as an early scene that cuts from Tahei and Matashichi gingerly escaping the aftermath of a palace-sttack to a shot of them running full pelt after stealing some rice, and then a second sharp cut that shows them sitting while the rice cooks. It's not the most amazing sequence in cinema history, but it's a highly effective conveyance of action that shows how Kurosawa was able to actively shape the speed of his story.

The film also uses Rokurota and the Princess to examine themes of keeping one's humanity in the face of defeat... setting up a discussion of nobility and dignity vs. compassion and sorrow. The Princess chastises Rokurota's lack of tears for his sister, and makes them use their gold to buy a fellow clanswoman out of her slavery, and through them both Hidden Fortress demonstrates the qualities of good leadership. This is more or less what the whole film is really about if you take out the two peasants.


One more thing worth mentioning is how highly influential Hidden Fortress was on George Lucas in relation to the first Star Wars film. See related texts below for more.

DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
WRITER/SOURCE: Shinobo Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni.
KEY ACTORS: Toshiro Mifune, Miso Uehara, Minoru Chiaki, Kamitari Fujiwara, Takashi Shimura, Susumu Fujita

RELATED TEXTS:
- Remade in 2008 as The Last Princess.
- George Lucas' use of frame wipes in Star Wars was lifted directly from Kurosawa. Lucas also took inspiration from the idea of telling a story from the perspective of the two lowest characters, and told the first Star Wars film from the POV of C3PO and R2D2, two lowly droids. The end of Star Wars, with Princess Leia rewarding Luke and Han with medals, is remniscent of the end of The Hidden Fortress as well.
- Both Star Wars and The Hidden Fortress took some inspiration from the mythic John Ford western The Searchers.
- Other Kurosawa Samurai films: Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Throne of Blood, Sanjuro, Kagemusha and Ran.

Advise and Consent

"This is a Washington DC kinda lie - that's when the other person knows you're lying and also knows you know he knows"

Advise and Consent is like the darkly honest undercurrent to Mr Smith Goes to Washington, shedding more light on the subtext of corruption by bringing it even further to the front and dissecting it in a colder, harsher light. The 1960s were an era when Western society was beginning to question authority and its associated institutions, and director Otto Preminger was pushing the boundaries as far he could push them. The opening credits of this film depict the dome of the Capitol building tilted open while the names of actors flash by, as if the film is literally lifting the lid on Washington D.C.

Advise and Consent ushers us into the complicated world of Washington politics with a large and diverse cast. At the centre of the film's narrative is Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda), a liberal senator nominated as new Secretary of the State and facing off against his conservative counterparts (chiefly represented by Charles Laughton as Senator Seab Cooley) in an increasingly volatile atmosphere of war (the Cold War, Cuba and Vietnam) and questionable foreign policy. It's also a war of idealogies between the Right and the Left. Cooley is of the conservative old guard - full of pride, war-hungry, and Southern in that "Don't tread on me" mentality. Leffingwell is liberal, wanting to avoid war, and representative of a new 20th century order, and so he finds himself targeted by his battle-eager peers... his pacifism interepreted as un-American, and his reputation smeared by accusations of communism.

This is a fiercely intelligent and down-and-dirty film about what really goes on in politics, and I can't imagine it was treated too gently by the American Right in 1962 - especially with the Vietnam War just beginning. Advise and Consent shows us the makers and shakers, and the powerful struggle to get things done. Different factions make dodgy deals with shady motivations, resorting to blackmail or riding personal vendettas... these are people trying to force each other's hands just to keep themselves clean, playing with people's lives. It's quite sordid actually, but completely plausible - it reminded me a bit of later seasons from The Wire.

Thankfully we get moments where the political biology of the American government gets explained in detail for laymen members of the audience (this comes via a french spectator at the Capitol building). Preminger uses devices like this to ensure that it never feels too dense or complicated. A lot of the entertainment factor is provided by Charles Laughton (in his last role) as the colourful Seabright Cooley, a belligerent old fire-and-brimstone senator from America's deep south who rides a grudge against Leffingwall throughout the entire film. Fonda's reputation for playing characters that represent America's conscience makes him a good candidate for the martyr-like role of Leffingwell, and both he and Laughton are ably supporting by a fine cast of underrated character actors (Burgess Meredith, Don Murray) and mature leading men (Franchot Tone, Walter Pidgeon).


As mentioned earlier, Preminger pushes the established appropriate parameters for dialogue and themes in a mainstream Hollywood film. This means a more risque approach to what words were deemed acceptable to use in a film (something he had previously stretched in Anatomy of a Murder) and directly tackling taboo subjects like communism and homsexuality. Not only does Preminger dare to address the subject of homosexuality, he also does it in a mature fashion that doesn't lean on a black and white morality. The character in question is being blackmailed for homosexual experimentation during his youth, the usual treatement of this subject is to characterise such a person as 'being in the closet', yet here - in 1962, no less - the film doesn't demonise him for his deception. He clearly loves his wife and kids, and despite having homosexual (or bisexual) leanings the film tacitly accepts that it's possible for such a man to love his family as much as a strictly heterosexual man. 'Gay' characters are frequently depicted today in a binary fashion that says they either are or they aren't. There doesn't seem to be any inbetween or shades of grey when it comes to sexuality in mainstream fiction. Anyway, I digress. In this case the character is also an ironic one - covering up his own past whilst he dogmatically persecutes Leffingwell for his. The undercurrent to this subplot is that old adage, "two wrongs don't make a right".

Preminger also makes good use of production design and his background in film noir to control the push and pull o fthe story via camera work. Washington D.C. is all narrow corridors, high hallways and grand desks, and incredibly alive too - it's like all the people are the blood and the corridors are the veins, and the Senate Chamber is the heart. It looks deceptively natural, but it must've been a headache to stage and film the scenes around the Senate where the camera follows characters in and out while action continues uninterrupted in the main chamber. I also love the way the camera pulls out to reveal Cooley's enraptured audience as he camps it up for his oratory.

Anyway, this is a fascinating film. The highlight is easily the groundbreaking homosexuality-subplot, but watch it also for Laughtons' great performance and some genuinely intelligent and realistic political drama. Preminger is to be admired to for being the first to break the infamous Hollywood Blacklist by casting Burgess Meredith and Will Geer.

DIRECTOR: Otto Preminger
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Wendell Mayes, based on a novel by Allen Drury.
KEY ACTORS: Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Burgess Meredith, Will Geer, Betty White

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Advise and Consent by Allen Drury, which won the Pullitzer Prize in 1959.
- Drury wrote five more quasi-fictional novels exploring the American political system, A Shade of Difference, Capable of Honour, Preserve and Protect, Come Ninevah Come Tyre and The Promise of Joy.
- Preminger's last golden period as a director saw him explore several groundbreaking topics and controversial subjects... these films include The Man With the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advise and Consent and The Cardinal.
- For more films on American governance and related topics, see All the King's Men, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Candidate, The Contender, The Ides of March, Good Night and Good Luck, Wag the Dog, and Primary Colours.

AWARDS
BAFTAs - nominated Best Foreign Actor (Charles Laughton).
Cannes Film Festival - nominated for the Palme d'Or.

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

The 1990s were a strange time for feature films... thanks to the success of The Addams Family, we had a seemingly endless wave of retro TV-inspired films seeking to marry hokey, nostalgic television properties with postmodern jokes and other annoyingly self-referential winks at contemporary audiences. These best of these projects ranged from the serious and inspired (The Fugitive) to the mockingly clever (The Brady Bunch). The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle tries hard to fall into that second category but falls very short of 'clever', and is perhaps the most bizarre of all the TV show adaptations I've seen.

The film takes a look at Rocky and Bullwinkle's absence from modern television in a metafictional way. The two characters have been living in retirement since their show was cancelled but their arch-enemies Boris (Jason Alexander), Natasha (Rene Russo) and Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro) find a way to leave their cartoon world and become live-action versions of themselves. It's up to Rocky, Bullwinkle, and an inexperienced FBI agent named Karen Sympathy (her name is a joke that only works in an American accent) to come to the world's rescue before the evil East-European villains can literally take over all of network television.

Leaving aside (for the moment) the question of why someone would even want to make a feature film based on this old cartoon, the film is a complete waste of space. The writers try their best to be hip by filling the film with witty self-aware stereotypes but at the end of the day it's just not a film that anyone really wants to see. Even with the predominantly live-action cast, it comes off as deliberately cartoonish (with characters named General Admission, Minnie Mogul and Judge Cameo), which is something that I'm just not a fan of. It's full of unabashedly obvious one-liners and satirises Hollywood in the most banal and broadly-rendered fashion. Imagine a lighthouse that actually emits a green light in order to give films and TV shows the go-ahead... it's that kind of 'clever' humour you're up against. There's also no internal logic at all, the film's only aim seems to be to go for cheap laughs over and over again. Predictably, it all ends with a tie-in hip-hop/RnB song that features Rocky and Bullwinkle rapping.

The most embarrassing aspect is probably De Niro as Fearless Leader. As required by the film, he's cartoonish and over-the-top, and even sports a fascistic 1930s haircut and German accent. It's the only live-action 'kids' film that he's ever done and hopefully he'll never do one again... it's so bad it even features him doing a parody of his famous "You talkin' to me?" bit from Taxi Driver.

Anyway, avoid this film at all costs. I only watched it because I'm a De Niro completist, but I just have to say that everything else aside, the issue remaining is - why would anyone want to make this movie, let alone watch it? Are there actually any hardcore Rocky and Bullwinkle fans out there?

DIRECTOR: Des McAnuff
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Kenneth Lonergan, based on the 1960s animated serial, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
KEY ACTORS: Robert De Niro, Rene Russo, Jason Alexander, Piper Perabo, Randy Quaid, June Foray, Keith Scott, Janeane Garofalo, Carl Reiner, John Goodman, James Rebhorn, Jon Polito, Taraji P. Henson, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg

RELATED TEXTS:
- The 1950s cartoon Rocky and Friends, and its 1960s spinoff, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
- There was a bizarre early 90s spinoff film called Boris and Natasha: The Movie. It featured neither Rocky or Bullwinkle.
- This film was 'inspired' by the production of the film Dudley Do-Right, also based on characetrs from the same TV show. A third film, Peabody's Improbable History, was also planned but never eventuated due to the poor box office performance of the other films.
- There are so many films based on TV shows that it would be impossible for me to list them all. Here are some of the ones based on cartoons (I'm sure they're all awful): Dennis the Menace, Inspector Gadget, Garfield, Smurfs. None of them were any good or made a whole heap of money, so why did so many of them get made?
- The best mixed live-action/animation film is easily Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- For a better film based on a TV show that features a metafictional approach, see The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.

To Catch a Thief

In comparison to Vertigo or North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief is a slightly more lighthearted Hitchcock film that sees a reformed cat burgler John Robie (Cary Grant) trying to clear his name while a copycat lurks the French Riviera. While Robie does this he has to avoid capture by the police and begins playing a cat-and-mouse game with a possible suspect, Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly). Meanwhile, Frances suspects Robie of committing the robberies, and the audience is left guessing too!

I didn't get into this Hitchcock film as much as some of his other 1950s stuff. There are some great moments and the film is realistic about dealing with the language barrier between English and French-speaking characters, and the whole whodunnit plot keeps the viewing guessing despite how much we might suspect certain characters at various points. But I just didn't feel all that invested in Robie's plight, and the usual psychological subtext that makes some of Hitchcock's stuff so intense or endurable was just played down too much. There are some cat and gambling motifs throughout, and I did like the allusion to Frances and Robie having nonmarital sex offscreen (Frances' mother [Jessie Royce Landis] asks her "Just what did he steal from you?" in this cheeky sort of way, and Kelly looks offended and embarrassed as if he just stole her virginity, "Oh mother!")

Robie is a man with an interesting backstory (it involves the French Resistance) but is also completely practical and angst-free despite the bad wrap he gets from the local community (elegantly symbolised by the splat of an egg on a window that Robie stands behind). I loved the bit where Robie gets asked about the war, "Did you kill many people?" - the cliched response is for the hero to get all moody and evade the question, but Grant cheerfully replies, "72". There's one good point that he makes about the hypocrisy of society when it comes to a reformed thief like himself, in regards to the line people draw between casual everyday thieving and the things that people get convicted for. It's a great character for Grant, but I have to question the wardrobe choices made for him - his stripey top causes his chest to strobe at various points.


Hitchcock uses lots of location filming and even some helicopter shots to help establish the exotic setting (getting their money's worth) and mixes it with as much studio filming as he can get away with. He even intercuts interior water shots with location work in the sea so he can film his close-ups in the studio! The funny thing about Hitchcock is that his mixing of filmstock and use of bluescreen never feels out of place or unnatural due to the sense of artiface he has cultivated for the look of his films by this point (1955). All of his shots are so carefully constructed that they create an internal kind of reality where bluescreen is a normal part of this world.

One more thing before I go, there's a massive hole in the plot's logic that probably should have been addressed. All Robie really needed to do to clear his name is to let the police take him and then wait for another robbery to be commited while he was in custody. While he's at large and the robberies go on he just makes it look worse for himself. Then again, if this didn't happen it wouldn't be much of a film. Like I said earlier, I just didn't really feel the wow factor with this one. Grant and Kelly have a great chemistry together, and Kelly is at her radiant and playful best, so it's still easily worth a watch as a lesser film by Hitchcock is still a pretty good film!

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by John Michael Hayes, based on the novel To Catch a Thief.
KEY ACTORS: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessica Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanel, Brigette Auber

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel To Catch aThief by David Dodge, written in 1952.
- Hitchcock cast Grace Kelly in three of his films - the other two are Dial M For Murder and Rear Window. He would've cast her in Marnie as well but she had retired from acting by then.
- Cary Grant made four films with Hitchcock. His other three are Suspicion, Notorious and North by Northwest.
- For another fix of thieving on the riviera, check out the comedy Bedtime Story.
- Other lighthearted and twisty films about thievery include How to Steal a Million, Gambit, Topkapi, Arabesque and Charade. They arguably all take some note of inspiration from To Catch a Thief.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Cinematography (Colour). Also nominated for Best Art Direction (Colour) and Best Costume Design (Colour).
Venice Film Festival - won the Golden Lion Award.

Bran Nue Dae

I didnt' really know how to take Bran Nue Dae at first... I've never really been much of a fan of heavily stylised films or musicals that wear their sense of artiface on their sleeve, so at first I felt like this happy-go-lucky road movie about Aborigines in 1960s Western Australia was a bit too much. It won me over though. It didn't take long, it well and truly had me with a scene near the beginning where a host of Aborigine boys mix traditional Aboriginal dance with a big vaudeville showbiz number during mass while making fun of the Church. It won't be to everyone's taste, but I love it whenever films or books can attack the supposedly unassailable institutions of our society whilst keeping a sense of humour. What's not to like about that?

Willie (Rocky McKenzie) is a teenage Aborigine in 1969 Broome. His mum (Ningali Lawford) wants him to be a priest but he's a young man at the mercy of his hormones, and he has it bad for Rosie (Jessica Mauboy). Willie is sent to a seminary in Perth run by Father Benedictus (Geoffrey Rush), an eccentric German priest armed with a neverending supply of Cherry Ripes. Willie quickly gets fed up with the hypocrisy fo the dominant white culture though and runs away, becoming one of the city's homeless Aboriginal population. He meets Uncle Tadpole (Ernie Dingo), an alcoholic larriken who helps Willie hitchhike back to Broome with a pair of roadtripping hippies (Missy Higgins and Tom Budge).

The Aboriginal members of the cast have the most fun with it, maybe because they're a bit more relaxed with the subject matter... Ernie Dingo (in one of his increasingly rare returns to acting) in particular is funny and moving as Uncle Tadpole, he represents Willie's future and the hopelessness of Aborigines brought up within the white system, and he gives an incredibly even and honest performance. Deborah Mailman also seems to be having a lot of fun playing against type as a drunken floozy. On the other end of the spectrum though is singer-songwriter Missy Higgins, who is just plain embarrassing in her acting debut.

The only real standout song for me was Nothing I Would Rather Be, I can't say much of the other music made much of an impression. What I liked though was the way the film leans on kitsch and irony to subvert the musical genre and talk about Aboriginal issues. It uses an infectious sense of humour to lull the viewer into a false sense of security before getting to the heart of the matter, exploring the way Aboriginal culture has been eroded by white ideals of assimilation. It even touches on the issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody. And despite these lofty allusions, it's a film short enough not to wear out its welcome or get too bogged down in accusations of guilt, which I think makes it just about perfect as far as intelligent works of entertainment go!

DIRECTOR: Rachel Perkins
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Rachel Perkins and Reg Cribb, based on the musical play Jimmy Chi and the band Kuckles.
KEY ACTORS: Rocky McKenzie, Ernie Dingo, Geoffrey Rush, Missy Higgins, Tom Budge, Jessica Mauboy, Ningali Lawford, Deborah Mailman, Magda Szubanski, Dan Sultan

RELATED TEXTS:
- Bran Nue Dae, the first Aboriginal musical stage play, written by Jimmy Chi in 1990, and with songs by the Aboriginal band Kuckles. Ernie Dingo starred in the first production.
- A53 minute documentary (also called Bran Nue Dae) was made about the original stage play in 1991.
- The recent 2007 version of Hairspray is the most similar film I can think in terms of tone and the way it deals with race relations in the 1960s.

AWARDS
AFIs - won Best Supporting Actress (Deborah Mailman). Also nominated for Best Film, Best Score, Best Sound, Best Costume Design and Reader's Choice Award.

Charles Bronson Superstar

This is probably a bit pulpish and bit hard to track down, but I couldn't resist talking about this fawning 70s monument to action icon Charles Bronson.

Now, I'm a huge Charles Bronson fan. Death Wish, The Machinist, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Great Escape, The Indian Runner, The Magnificent Seven, Mr. Majestyk, Apache... well, maybe not Apache, but you get the picture. He has a huuuuuuge back catalogue of pulp action films from the 70s and 80s that I've been slowly working my way through - they're cheesy, but Bronson is always so ice cool in them.

This book was written in the 1970s, shortly after Bronson became an uber-star with the 1974 hit revenge-film Death Wish. The book opens with a quote from Bronson, "I hate biographies", and then launches into a spirited re-telling of his early days as a migrant kid in extreme poverty. According to this book, the extremes Bronson faced in his childhood go beyond belief... he endured the deaths of several siblings and his father, all of whom worked in dangerous mines, and became an actor in spite of his premature weather-beaten looks and inability to speak English properly.

The point where I realised that I might not have been reading a completely truthful biography of Bronson's life came with the book's serious use of this quote from the man himself on losing his virginity...

"I remember my first time. I was five and a half years old... this was a Fourth of July picnic, and there was this girl, six years old, I gave her some strawberry pop. I gave her the pop because I didn't want it - I had taken up chewing tobacco and I liked that better. I didn't start smoking until I was nine. I gave her the pop, and then we... hell, I never lost my virginity. I never had any virginity!"

And with every paragraph the writer swoons and gushes about Bronson's genius. I'm not saying the man is without talent - like I said, I'm a huge fan, but this author really takes it too far. If you happen across this book and you're up for an amusing read then I'd recommend this, just don't take it seriously. I guess I should never have taken it seriously... the cover reads "The real man behind the rock-hard macho image! The dramatic, revealing inside story of what has made Charles Bronson the #1 movie male!"

Charles Bronson Superstar!
(with candid and exciting photos!)

The Day of the Dolphin

With a name like The Day of the Dolphin and a story involving political insurgents using a talking dolphin in a crazy plot to assassinate the American President, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this film. And yet it's all played out completely seriously and is actually a great movie, not at all ridiculous or schlocky... it's just a serious film with a wild premise. I wasn't sure where The Day of the Dolphin was going a lot of the time due the unlikely premise, at first I thought it was going to be a horror film or something a bit more speculative. It builds up slowly, piquing the viewer's interest and playing up the tension by coming at the fantastic concept in a highly realistic manner, and then in the third act it veers into political thriller territory.

Dr. Jake Terrell (George C. Scott) is a marine biologist working at an isolated dolphin research facility on an island. He and his wife (Trish Van Devere) have been secretly curtailing their funds into one single project, teaching a dolphin named Alpha how to speak and understand English. Soon the money men come calling, looking for evidence of worthwhile spending. Jake tries to keep Alpha a secret, especially when an enigmatic and bullish writer named Curtis Mahoney (Paul Sorvino) also shows up, but soon the proverbial cat is out of the bag and rogue elements within the U.S. military hatch a plan to exploit Alpha in the worst possible way.


The Day of the Dolphin actually succeeds in making dolphins seem sinister. Alpha is by no means a monster or antagonist, but there's something about these keenly intelligent creatures that makes them seem so alien. A lot of this film is devoted to examining the complex relationship between two very different intelligent species, and it's done in a completely believable way. This is mostly thanks to a well-researched script and George C. Scott taking his role very seriously.

Scott's role is akin to the 'mad scientist' archetype seen in horror and sci-fi films, but (owing to the nature of this story) he's a more balance and sympathetic version of this character type. Scott's a giant of acting, and he could very easily hammed it up or phoned it in due to the odd premise (as are the big actors sometimes known to do when their careers are in decline). Instead he takes this single-minded dolphin expert and plays it in a controlled and emotionally-real Oscar-worthy way. He's essentially acting opposite an animal, unable to use the dolphin's alien body language for cues, but he pours himself into this believable father-son dynamic and by the film's moving ending you'll be invested in his plight completely.

Don't watch this film expecting a whole heap of action, the poster above is a little bit misleading. A lot of Day of the Dolphin deals with themes and fears relating to exploitation, and offers a fascinating speculative scenario. It also features a beautiful baroque-flavoured score of harp, strings and woodwinds to help create one of the most unique takes on the 70s thriller/drama ever put to celluloid.

DIRECTOR: Mike Nichols
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Buck Henry, based on a novel by the French writer Robert Merle.
KEY ACTORS: George C. Scott, Paul Sorvino, Trish Van Devere, Fritz Weaver, Edward Hermann, Jon Korkes

RELATED TEXTS:
- The 1967 novel A Sentient Animal by Robert Merle.
- The Day of the Dolphin formed the inspiration for part of Treehouse of Horror XI, a Halloween episode of The Simpsons.
- The late 90s indie film Black and White features extensive references to The Day of the Dolphin in a scene featuring Robert Downey Jr. and Brooke Shields.
- Just to give you an idea of how strange and unique The Day of the Dolphin is, the two closest films in similarity are the paranoid 70s thriller The Parallax View and the children's conservationist adventure Free Willy.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Music and Best Sound.
Golden Globes - nominated for Best Music.

The Good Earth

I can't say I'm familiar with the classic novel this film was contemporaneously based on, but there's a suitable level of prestige attached to its production to convince the viewer of the its worth. Featuring Paul Muni (at the height of his fame and accolades) as a chinese peasant, and showcasing an epic level of design that re-stages early twentieth century China in California, this film got a lot of attention at the time of its release. Now, however, there's a lot about The Good Earth that falls flat or feels unintentionally quaint despite its earnest attempts at authentically portraying China in all its gritty, heartfelt glory.

Wang Lung (Paul Muni) is a humble Chinese peasant living in poverty during the early 1920s. He's happy despite his lack of material wealth, especially when he is given a former slave to marry (played minimalistically by Luise Rainer) and buys land an inch at a time. Time passes and Wang Lung becomes a wealthy landowmer, he is set back drought and famine but the chaos and unrest that results from widespread revolution gives him a chance to reclaim his glory. What ensues if essentially a morality tale about the class system that sells the ideal of the 'good earth' (a reference to working on the land), and Lung's redemption from greed and class betrayal comes via his return to this earth.

Alongside this relatively simple (if overblown) fable we're treated to semi-educational asides about Chinese culture and customs. The most revisited of these is the idea of prostrating oneself so as not to offend but compliment the other part (EG. "My wife is very ugly, not like yours"), which becomes a running joke of sorts. The Good Earth is essentially not about the traditions of Chinese life or the spirit of Chinese farmers but about 'simple' folk everywhere, and their innate goodness due to the uncomplicated lives they lead. It's perhaps unfortunate that so much cultural 'colour' is put into the script as it becomes embarrassingly comical and condescending - just look at the scene where Wang Lung is seen with food toppling down his chin in an undiginified manner. When was the last time you saw a sympathetic white character of apparent low class do this in a film? Just about never! And it was even less likely you would see such a thing back in the 1930s, when this film was made. The filmmakers try to create to create an air of authenticity by mixing real chinese actors alongside European or American actors, but the effect (as always) only serves to highlight how out of place the non-Asians are. It also doesn't help that the film reinforces the stereotypically downcast and subservient 'chinaman' as the most morally upstanding kind of Chinese citizen.

Something that the film does do well though is the transition of the warlord-ruled China into an era of revolution and hope. We see this mostly via Wang Lung's perspective, as a peasant he's confused and neither knows nor cares what a 'republic' is! I think that's pretty realistic. His hair changes accordingly too, from the manchurian-enforced queue to longer hair that reflects the post-revolution period. It isn't mentioned directly via dialogue at any point but it's a nice touch in terms of historical accuracy and detail.


Paul Muni. I like him as an actor because he always makes a big show out of playing the widest variety of roles possible, which is fun for the viewer but inevitably he's also a bit of a joke sometimes as a result (which is probably why he isn't as well remembered as his contemporaries - Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and James Cagney). As Wang Lung he tries to find the common threads of humanity that will give his performance the reference points a predominantly western audience needs to connect with the character. This includes his excitement at getting married, his nervousness on the wedding day, or his compassion when he learns his wife's former life as a slave. However, something that he's completely unable to get around is the fact that he has the wrong head shape for an Asian, and so you never forget at any time that he's a white guy underneath all those mannerisms and make-up. He puts on an accent but resists pidginising it, and does a good enough job of embodying the character's goodness and naivete, as well as his boastfulness, dimness and ambition.

Olan (Luise Rainer) is the stoic flipside to Wang Lung, her hard upbringing means that she is able to do what he can't - such as killing the family's Ox for food (one of the film's most moving moments). There's also the slightest suggestion that she kills her newborn child to spare it the misery of famine and to put less strain on the family. She also knows how to beg and steal, which comes in handy for the family during the city sequences. I have to admit though that I don't really get the appeal of Rainer's Oscar-winning performance... her delivery is so serious and so laughably intense that it's like she's playing the most important part in the most important film ever made. Like the bit where she suddenly stops hoeing in the field and says (mysteriously) "I am with child".

The rest of the cast is fairly patchy. The dodgy, untrustworthy uncle (Walter Connelly) wears thin after a while, and Wang Lung's father (Charley Grapewin) doesn't even look or seem remotely Chinese. Overall, my favourite bits of the film were the city revolution and the locust swarm climax (I'm still not sure how they achieved this), both of which demonstrate a good sense of controlled scale. I was so sad when Wang Lung had to say goodbye to his cow - no other moment in the film got an emotional reaction from me like that. I guess if you want a historical epic about the tides of fortune and one man's evolution from humality to pride (and then back again) then this is worth a watch - it's got storms, famine, locust plagues, looting, firing squads and even dirt-eating. Pretty comprehensive! But be warned, time hasn't been kind to it.


SIDENOTE: One thing that feels strange for a 1930s American film is the fact that Olan and Wang-Lung are shown to steal (during the looting/revolution sequence) and they don't get punished for it in any way (which goes against the rules of the then-active Hays Code). Maybe this is because the context is so far removed from America that it somehow doesn't matter, but I found it odd nonetheless (especially since the Hays Code is largely to blame for the general lack of Chinese actors playing major characters).

DIRECTOR: Sidney Franklin, Victor Fleming and Gutsav Muchaty.
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Talbot Jennings, Claudine West and Tess Slessinger. Based on the play The Good Earth, which was based on the novel The Good Earth.
KEY ACTORS: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connelly, Charley Grapewin, Keye Luke, Jessie Ralph, Tilly Losch

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, which won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize and was also instrumental in Buck's winning of the Nobel Prize. It is actually the first book in a trilogy that also contains the novels Sons and A House Divided.
- The play The Good Earth, adapted from the novel by Donald and Owen Davis, which formed the basis for the film.
- Some parallels can be drawn between The Good Earth's vision of famine and poverty with The Grapes of Wrath, which looks at dustbowl America in the wake of the Great Depression, and Earth, about peasant dissent in Russia.
- Other 'big' classic Hollywood films about Asia (all of which inevitably feature white actors playing Asians): The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Lost Horizon, Anna and the King of Siam, Dragon Seed (also based on a Pearl S. Buck novel), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, Satan Never Sleeps and The Keys of the Kingdom.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Actress (Luise Rainer) and Best Cinematography. Also nominated for Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Film.

Firefox

"Let's see what this baby can do".

Clint Eastwood dives headfirst into the Cold War with this very serious spy thriller about a fictional super-jet (Firefox) perfected by the 'evil' Russians and coveted by the 'good' and freedom-loving Americans. Eastwood plays the reluctant, burnt-out super soldier called back into duty for a suicide mission. The first hour or so of the film is a tense and slowly-paced espionage movie before shifting a hi-tech action chase, a rather oddly structured approach that doesn't really do the audience any favours.

Mitchell Gant (Eastwood) is a biologically half-Russian but culturally all-American hero suffering from delayed stress syndrome due to the Vietnam War. He's called upon to go behind the iron curtain and steal Firefox, so he goes undercover as a moustachioed heroin smuggler with glasses and a comb-over and sneaks into Russia. He doesn't cope very well though, especially when he's left to fend for himself behind enemy lines, and he very much seems out of his depth. He goes further and further behind the curtain, eventually even assuming a Russian identity ('Boris Glaznov'), before grabbing the Firefox and transforming into the Eastwoodian hero we all know he really is.

Gant isn't too much of a stretch as far as Clint Eastwood characters go... he starts out as a bearded post-traumatic Vietnam vet suffering quietly in a pine forest cabin, reliving his capture at the hands of the Viet Cong. He doesn't seem like a very likely hero, but then an American helicopter visits him and he responds to the noise by trying to face it down armed only with a shotgun, suggesting that this is a man living on the edge. When he gets behind enemy lines it becomes quite a tricky situation though because he's entirely on his own - and to make things worse he has to also cope with this debilitating form of post-war stress that can strike at any moment. Having said that, this is all in the first half of the film, by the time he steals Firefox (around the half-way mark) there isn't really much room for characterisation as it's all action from this point on, and it feels like a completely different movie.

Firefox is a very serious and almost ominous film at first. We're treated to an hour of Eastwood looking baffled as he's guided through layers of subterfuge in the Soviet Union. It's actually a bit boring, and it begins to feel like a pointless exercise. Russia itself is depicted as a horrible, fascistic place full of suspicious people. Tellingly, Eastwood's character is eventually helped by a Jewish resistance force within Russia's borders (did such a thing even exist in the 1980s?). What films like Firefox seem to gloss over though is just how big Russia really is. Why is it so hard for Gant to move around in the Soviet Union (and it's so easy for him to be tracked?) It's the polar opposite of an action-thriller set in America, in which the authorities would have to work hard to even find the criminal (see Nighthawks, any Dirty Harry film, etc, etc) In Firefox the 'criminal' (Gant) has to work hard just to move from one place to the other. It's quite a blinkered American view of a supposedly all-pervading Soviet Empire, and it's probably the one aspect that dates this film the most.

There are a few other a few glaring holes in the film's logic as well... we're never told why Gant agrees so readily to embark on this suicide mission that obviously scares the wits out of him, nor is it made clear how the American 'heroes' can justify stealing a Russian plane just because it's more awesome then their own planes. Also some of the internal logic in the Russian-set portion of the film doesn't make any sense. Why do the Russians speak English when they're on their own, yet Eastwood later speaks in Russian to convince some Russians that he's one of them? The hokey music doesn't help the overall feel of the production either - it's especially out of place when Eastwood creeps into the hanger to steal Firefox and it's accompanied by an easygoing synth-jazz bop that undercuts the suspensful tone completely.

One thing that I did find interesting in the later parts of Firefox is that Eastwood (the 'good' guy) is dressed in black whilst the Russian pilot (the 'bad' guy) is dressed in orange and white, perhaps suggesting some subconscious acknowledgement of the dodgy ethics at play. Firefox itself is the kind of chic 1980s version of futuristic that fueled a lot of action films, being an 'invisible' Mach 5 aircraft with modern weapons capability. Whilst the glossy 1980s bluescreen and other associated special effects aren't as slick as they could've been, it still makes for an thumping international aerial chase. I can't say I really got into the rest of the film all that much, but the aerial chase scenes were at least fun to watch.

DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Alex Lasker and Wendell Wellman, based on a novel by Craig Thomas.
KEY ACTORS: Clint Eastwood, Freddie Jones, David Huffman, Nigel Hawthorne, Warren Clarke, Ronald Lacey

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Firefox, written by Craig Thomas and released in 1977. This novel was followed by a sequel, Firefox Down, and two further books involving the same characters - Winter Hawk and A Different War.
- Eastwood's movie inspired an arcade game, also called Firefox.
- Clint Eastwood's only other real foray into the fictionalised world of espionage was The Eiger Sanction.
- Other stealth aircraft thriller/adventures: Top Gun, Blue Thunder, Airwolf and Stealth.
- See also Cold War thrillers along the lines of The Hunt for the Red October, Crimson Tide, K-19: The Widowmaker and Hostile Waters.

Night and the City

"Harry's an artist without an art"

Night and the City tells the story of Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark). He's a man belatedly clinging to a dream of a high life, and won't settle for any kind of normal nine to five existence... he lives a life of desperation and get-rich-quick schemes, and the above quote sums up parasites and talk-men the world over: the promoters, the agents, the scammers and the hustlers. Harry knows how to worm his way into people's confidence, he's an opportunist and a coward with no real friends - little else than money talks to him. And yet, Harry is the 'hero' of this film - he's slime but we feel sorry for him because his morivation and desperation is so obvious that he's easily manipulated by bigger fish. He's like a little kid, eager to join the big time but forever considered a joke by the big boys.

Harry is an atypical American film noir protagonist in an atypical film noir London setting. This is a cold, cynical and sleazy post-war city that starts closing around Harry like a fist when his number is finally up. It's a welcome break from American detective-noir traditions - a new setting for the pond-feeders to interact in. It's also an amazing and sharp-looking masterclass in atmosphere and characterisation; full of low angles, dutch angles, high angles - as many angles as Fabian has himself, and just as few straight ones. I sometimes feel that talking about cinematography in a review if usually a shortcut to pretentiousness, but this film genuinely has some of the most beautiful black and white cinematography... it's film noir at its best, the way smoke curls through the air hypnotically or the way Harry's face threatens to disappear as shadows swallow him up - it's gorgeous.

There's a real sense of foreboding throughout Night and the City. Harry uses a wrestling promoter's father against him, playing a dangerous game and tightening the noose around his own neck for when his scheme eventually falls through (and we know from the start that it will). It's a world where players are always playing each other... the only reason the hapless Harry is able to get a chance in the first place is because someone else is using him for their own schemes.


Director Jules Dassin has his own ideas in mind and goes about them confidentally... the result is an unpredictable but meticulously plotted film that keeps the viewer guessing right up until the terrifying final scenes where Harry runs to his fate. There are certain parts of this film that feel so real and visceral, a standout being the wrestling match between an old wrestler (Stanislaus Zbyszko) and his young rival (Mike Mazurki). It's exhausting to watch these two great slabs of meat grappling with each other for physical supremacy, and there's a tension in the scene that arises from Dassin's great sense of context.

Of course, this film also wouldn't be the classic it is without the presence of Richard Widmark in the lead role. I just love Widmark's default face, that look of abjectness - not quite horror or digust, just that curling of the lip and bemused stare that somehow says he doesn't belong anywhere. It makes Harry a man out of his depth and all the more dangerous for it.

DIRECTOR: Jules Dassin
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Jo Eisinger, based on a novel by Gerald Kersch.
KEY ACTORS: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Herbert Lom, Mike Mazurki, Stanislaus Zbyszko, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Night and the City by British novelist Gerald Kersch, published in 1938. Kersch wrote about a score of novels in the 40s, 50s and 60s - most of which dealt with petty criminals and gangsters in the London underworld.
- The film was remade (somewhat poorly) by Irwin Winkler as Night and the City, and starred Robert De Niro in the Widmark role.
- Dassin was one of the more notable Hollywood figures to be infamously blacklisted in the late 1940s... Night and The City was his last American film before the blacklisting became active. Prior to this he had directed other film noir films such as Brute Force and The Naked City. After the blacklisting he went on to make the classic European heist film, Rififi.
- More low-burn films about low-life anti-heroes: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Fingers, Taxi Driver, Bad Lieutenant and The Asphalt Jungle.

The Losers

Every comic book and its dog gets optioned for film rights these days, and there's almost an unspoken rule that these properties are inherently awesome and that film versions somehow nearly always get something wrong in their translation. I haven't read the comic of The Losers but I have a feeling that this is a fairly accurate adaptation as it seems to be fairly straight-shooting. It's as if the creative team thought that being faithful to the comic would be enough to ensure some measure of success, but despite how hard The Losers tries to be fun and enegertic, the plot and characters are actually just boring.

How many times have we seen this story recently? A (post)modern hi-tech mercenary group gets sold out by a dirty CIA contractor... they're betrayed and left for dead, and now they have to go off the grid to get the bad guy and prove their innocence. Meanwhile, the bad guy is planning to betray all of America. This plot just as easily describes The A Team and Red (and to a lesser extent, The Expendables) but the difference here is that The Losers doesn't have a gimmick that gives it an edge over other action films.

It looks good and has a comic-y feel to it - like the way the characters talk, the wisecracks, the extreme close-ups on details, hyperbolic elements and snappy editing. It wants to be witty and subversive but it's cliched and lacks star charisma. It's also so iconographically conscious as to be iconographically self-conscious. I am so over the slow motion 'hero' shot where a group of characters walk towards the camera - it's lame, and surely it can't be taken seriously by anyone anymore? Also, the big reveal of the villain is seriously underwhelming, they spend all this time building him up by not showing his face and then... woah, it's Jason Patric! WTF, how's that a big reveal? Do people even know who Jason Patric is anymore?

The McGuffin of the movie, the 'snook', is a cool idea for a megaweapon but we're not even told how it works. Also, the unresolved ending was extremely anoying - The Losers seems to be setting itself up as a franchise but I have my doubts regarding the possibility of a sequel. The whole thing just seemed to be trying too hard and doesn't have any real points of difference that single it out against the slew of contemporary action films that flood the market year after year.

DIRECTOR: Sylvain White
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt, based on the comic series The Losers.
KEY ACTORS: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Columbus Short, Jason Patric, Holt McCallany

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Losers was a Vertigo comics series that ran from 2003 to 2006. It was a modern reimagining of a WWII comic from the 1970s also called The Losers.
- As mentioned earlier, a lot of this film's elements and plot beats can be experienced in a more entertaining fashion in the films Red, The A Team and The Expendables.
- More group-on-a-mission movies: Mission: Impossible, The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes and The Guns of Navarone.

Sucker Punch

Here's something you don't read everyday - a Canadian crime-mystery called Sucker Punch that leans on pulp and noir traditions whilst doing its own thing as well. I got this sent to me by the Canadian publisher Dundurn Press, and I found that I enjoyed it a lot.

Joe Grundy is an ex-middle of the road boxer now turned security guard. He heads up the security at the Lord Douglas Hotel, a high-class establishment that plays host to the cream of downtown Vancouver, Canada. Whilst juggling staff issues and a dead-end social life, Grundy finds himself smack bang in the middle of a good ol' fashioned murder mystery with a touch of conspiracy about it. A local hippy has just inherited around half a billion dollars (snatching it out from under the noses of a pair of very angry corporate charity organisations), and he makes no friends when he announces his plan to give it all away to the masses. Grundy figures it's his business when the hippy gets murdered at the hotel on his watch, and he sets about chasing the mystery, chasing some staff who have gone AWOL, and chasing an outstanding bar tab.

The author of this novel, Marc Strange, is a character-actor and creator of some old TV series I'd never heard of (The Beachcombers). I'm not sure if this is his first novel or not, but I found it to be a very enjoyable, assured and engaging read. It's more remniscent of pulpish crime-mysteries in the vein of Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett than, say, more mainstream crime fiction by James Patterson or Patricia Cornwell, which suits me right down to my bones. There's an urban sweatiness in the writing and if I had to pick out what Strange's strongpoint is I'd say it's the characterisation... this book juggles a huge cast of supporting characters (many of whom I suspect will turn up again if other Joe Grundy mysteries get written) and not once was I stuck remembering who was who.

Strange also seems to possess a deft ability to portray all these varying players and low-lives from the many stratas of society - shifty businessmen, money-lending gangsters, dodgy security guards, vulture-like relatives, ambitious journalists, scumbag journalists - without any self-consiousness or irrelevance. And anchoring all this is the narrator, Joe Grundy himself, an amiable and humble protagonist who could easily carry a few more adventures should the situations that arise not be too contrived. It's refreshing to read one of these books where the main character isn't a detective or a policeman, and the plot and Grundy's involvement in it is realistic enough for the reader to play along and believe in it.

Anyway, if you're a fan of pulp fiction or engaging crime novels, then I'd easily recommend this book. If you're reading this from Australia though you'll probably have to order it in via your local bookshop or just look it up on Amazon.

Perfume

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is an 18th-century Parisian born without an odour. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, he has a superhuman sense of smell. Patrick Suskind's twisted and grotesque novel follows this bizarre protagonist from the very day of his birth onwards, chronicling his life as an oddity and unsung villain, and detailing each and every person who rejects him along the way. I've never read anything like it.

Grenouille is abandoned at birth by an uncaring mother and passed from police to priest to orphanage to apprenticeship, each person instinctively revolted by him or fearing him. Grenouille grows into a very strange little man, both ugly and nondescript, and both genius and idiot. His sense of smell is extraordinary and Suskind details it in every way imaginable - pushing the barriers of a sense that most of us probably consider our least important, and exploring the powers that such a magnification of this sense could bring. Grenouille's motivations throughout the book remain unique as a result and it's easy to see why this book has remained as popular as it has in the twenty-odd years since it was first published.

Due to the aforementioned originality of the book's premise, there's no telling where it will lead you. One thing becomes clear as it rolls along though, there's a heavy theme of contempt for humanity at work underneath, and this makes for a witty mix of the ironically funny and loathingly tragic. At times the book is incredibly disturbing but the overall tone tends to downplay it to the point where it never really gets depressing or bogged down in its own sense of horror. I also think that, provided that you don't take everything at face value, there's a real resonance in the book's ending that makes sense of some of the book's many themes... death, desire, love, etc, etc.

And for the more historically-minded, there's even some in-depth examinations of various perfume-making techniques contained in the book. If you're interested at all in how we capture and mix smells, then this book can actually be very informative.

The Phantom of the Opera

"Feast your eyes - glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!"

If I had to pick one silent film to recommend to those who had never seen a silent film then I would probably say The Phantom of the Opera. It's fast-paced, scary, and features the first iconic horror star in (arguably) his most famous role. Featuring an arresting string score, the film has a real sense of momentum that drives towards an exciting climax, exploring the idea of the Phantom as an urban legend of his time. The Phantom is a wonderful 'monster' too, urbane and grotesque but also sympathetic despite his capacity for murder... he ranks up there as the noble grandfather of horror movie monsters.

The Phantom of the Opera opens on the sale of a haunted oepra house. The new owners scoff at the suggestion of a resident 'ghost', and the first 15 minutes of the film are devoted to introducing the legend of the Phantom (Lon Chaney) via the gossiping staff of the Paris Opera House. After this the plot starts - the mother (Virginia Pearson) of the famous oepra singer Carlotta (Mary Fabian) demands that her daughter performs on Wednesday night, but the Phantom works from behind the scenes to orchestrate the debut performance of Christine (Mary Philbin), a girl he has been coaching from behind the walls (literally). Christine is ambitious and romanticises the Phantom as a secret admirer. Meanwhile, she also has to deal with the attentions of Raoul (Norman Kerry), a more traditional suitor.

In reality, the Phantom is Erik, a deformed but educated figure who lives in the Parisian catacombs under the Opera House. Born in a massacre and implied to be the offspring of a raped woman, his disfigured face is a mark of trauma and symbolic of an evil, corrupt soul. Our first impression of the Phantom is that he is a machiavellian monster, with Christine his unsuspecting victim. But as the film progresses it becomes clear that Christine is so ambitious and greedy for recognition that she uses Erik to become an opera star. When they first meet face-to-face Christine is reluctant to embrace the Phantom as her lover but overcomes her initial disgust due to his charisma and talent. The little good that remains in Erik appeals for her love but she rejects any physical relationship with him, and so he is left with only hate and evil in his heart. She lies to him, uses him and ultimately betrays him -something that pushes this poor, unstable man towards atrocity.


It's a very visually memorable film... we see the Phantom's menacing silhouette behind the intertitles and there's a lot of effective use of shadows. We also get great symbolic scenes like the Phantom punting on the underground ferry like some sort of ferryman to Hell, or his emergence into a public fancy dress party as the legendary 'Red Death' (the film's famous colour-tinted sequence). Chaney's performance as the Phantom is a big part of the monster's appeal, a lot of our sympathy comes due to his tortured performance and frighteningly contorted skull-like face. It's a riveting and hypnotic piece of horror filmmaking, especially in the way that the last twenty minutes use tension and action to build to a big climax (much like an opera).

HIGHLIGHTS: The cliche/trope of the villain playing an elaborate pipe organ originates with this film. This sequence is used to physically introduce the Phantom to us (and Christine), and has hence been used many times in other films and TV shows to introduce all manner of dastardly rogues.

DIRECTOR: Rupert Julian
WRITER/SOURCE: About eight different writers worked on the screenplay and intertitles for the film. Based on the classic novel by Gaston Leroux.
KEY ACTORS: Lon Chaney, May Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland.

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, first published in serial form in 1910.
- There have been many other adaptations, the second most famous of which (after this silent film) is probably the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
- Other adaptations include: The Phantom of the Opera (1943) starring Claude Raines, The Phantom of the Opera (1962) a Hammer version starring Herbert Lom, The Phantom of the Opera (1983) a telemovie starring Maximilian Schell, The Phantom of the Opera (1989) starring Robert Englund, The Phantom of the Opera (1998) directed by the Italian horror legend Dario Argento and The Phantom of the Opera (2004) a film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
- See also Phantom of the Paradise, a 70s rock opera by Brian De Palma, and other sympathetic 'monster' films such as The Man Who Laughs and the various versions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.