Tongan Ninja

The name of this film alone is enough to make me laugh. Tongan Ninja tells the story of a Tongan ninja who travels to New Zealand to help a Chinese restaurant defend itself against greedy gangsters. It's a Z-grade kung fu parody made by a bunch of Kiwis with some digital video cameras, and the plot is lifted directly from the Bruce Lee film The Way of the Dragon. Tongan Ninja is probably most famous now (if at all) for featuring an early appearance from Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as the bad guy, but it's also one of those films that are so (intentionally) bad and over the top that it's hilarious.



Kung Fu films are very easy to parody (see related texts below) but there's something about setting this film in Auckland, New Zealand, that just cracks me up. It's got no budget, is literally so bad it's good, features a stackload of deliberately lame lines that make fun of the genre, has cartoonish characters and plot, and makes use of some truly shocking CGI. It's very silly, but also very spot on. As it's shot on a camcorder this means that the characters are overdubbed, but this actually fits with the kung fu parodying and so the bad overdubbing works to the film's advantage.





Some things I loved:

• The Chinese characters are almost all played by white guys, without any makeup, prosthetics or accents!
• The 'Tongan mind trick'.
• The songs are very much in the style of Flight of the Conchords, and performed by Jemaine and Bret from said TV show. The best of these is probably the James Bond/Hawaiian Elvis styled theme song at the film's beginning.
• Tongan Ninja's dream sequence, in which two bad guys appear. One of them asks, "Why aren't there any girls in your dream? Are you a homo?" and then it cuts to Jemaine Clement pouting suggestively.
  
  

DIRECTOR: Jason Stutter

WRITER/SOURCE: Jason Stutter and Jemaine Clement.

KEY ACTORS: Sam Manu, Jemaine Clement, Linda Tseng, Raybon Kan, David Fane, Victor Rodger



RELATED TEXTS:

- Kung fu parodies: Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Kung Phooey, They Call Me Bruce, Orgasmo and Kwoon.

- As mentioned earlier, Tongan Ninja lifts its plot directly from The Way of the Dragon.

- Writer-director Jason Stutter teamed up with Jemaine Clement two further times with Diagnosis: Death and Predicament.

- Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie's unique brand of comedy-songwriting was showcased further with the cult HBO sitcom Flight of the Conchords

The Running Man

"Gee, lucky he didn't kill you. Or rape you and kill you. Or kill you and rape you"

The Running Man was made at the point in Arnold Schwarzenegger's career when he was starting to really gain a lot of popularity. Some of the production design feels a bit dated and it isn't the sci-fi/action classic that Predator or Total Recall is, but there's an element of 80s B-grade schlock that makes it pretty damn enjoyable. In fact, a lot of it feels heavily influenced by the sci-fi ozploitation films Mad Max and Turkey Shoot, though whether this is actually the case or not I don't know. Basically, this is a big bag of trashy fun with Arnie at his earnest, wisecracking best.



Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards, a government-employed policeman in 2017 L.A. who is ordered by his superiors to fire upon people rioting for food. He refuses, his colleagues fire anyway, and he gets the blame. Richards is labelled by the media as 'the Butcher of Bakeresfield' and sent to a hard labour camp where he soon leads a daring escape. A network of rebels recognise Richards as a man of action who can lead their intellectual underground to victory... he has what they lack; toughness and the ability to make risky decisions. Richards is cynical and resists the idea, and soon he finds himself fighting for his life on the reality TV show The Running Man, where he can earn a pardon (or so he's told) by facing off against a series of gladiators.



In some ways The Running Man is quite ahead of its time; the reality TV theme is an eerily accurate prediction of future entertainment. The shows featured in this future might be a bit amped up, EG. Climbing for Dollars (where a man climbs a rope to get money while a pit of angry dogs attack from underneath), but are they really all that different from shows like Survivor? Or any number of crazy Japanese game shows? The central premise of The Running Man - that the media lies to us - is admirable and still relevant as well. This is demonstrated by the way the media is shown to manipulate the film's opening sequence to show Richards as a brutal murderer. It's the sort of thing that shows like The Simpsons and Frontline would have a lot of fun with several years later, but The Running Man got there before them.



In other ways, the depiction of the future in this film is very much a pure produc t of the 1980s. Blocky 80s computer graphics are used to convey technological advancement, and L.A. has an insanely upgraded skyline that reflects an exaggerated industrial outlook based on a 1980s morality and greed-ethic gone mad. Killian (Richard Dawson) is also a very typically late 80s/early 90s villain; glossy and warm when people can see him but an absolute arsehole when the public is out of view, and this is indicative of the era's growing attitude of fear towards big business and media personalities. We also know it's the future (in that very 80s way) due to the futuristic synthesised music, and the fact that it now costs $6 for a coke (which may very well be the case by the time 2017 rolls around). We also know that it isn't really the future but a 1980s version of it due to the fact that aerobics is still popular, women wear big metal earring and the vehicles are all blocky and angular.



One image that stood out for me was bearded Arnie in the workcamp, later seen chomping a cigar. Why don't we any cigar-chomping action heroes anymore, dammit? I thought the idea of a court-appointed theatrical agent was pretty funny too. Overall, The Running Man is pretty cheesy and incredibly violent, it's got exploding heads and there's even a point where Arnie chainsaws a guy in the balls. It's a grotesque satire of 80s consumer culture and it isn't strictly played for laughs, but since it's also so unavoidably a product of the 1980s then it may as well be (cue serious pop ballad playing over the final credits). Also, Jesse Ventura is hilarious in his supporting role, and if there's one thing I can't get enough of in a movie it's 1980s blue electricity special effects. When blue electricity is done well in an 80s movie (like it is here) it still looks a million times better than the modern CG equivalent.



SIDENOTE: I almost spat my drink out when Arnie's character said "I won't kill a defenceless human being". I know it's a tradition to characterise the hero by giving him a kind of honour code, but it doesn't really convince if this same character happily makes jokes as he brutally destroys his enemies with chainsaws and barbed wire!



Now, here's some vintage Arnie quotes:



RICHARDS: I'll be back.

KILLIAN: Only in a re-run.



RICHARDS: Give you a lift? (throws a guy to his death)



RICHARDS: Here is Sub Zero, now plain zero.



AMBER: What happened to Buzzsaw?

RICHARDS: Uh, he had to split.



FIREBALL: How bout a light?

RICHARDS (after killing him): What a hothead.



DIRECTOR: Paul Michael Glaser

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Steven E. de Souza. Based on a novel by Stephen King.

KEY ACTORS: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Richard Dawson, Jesse Ventura, Mick Fleetwood, Professor Toru Tanaka, Dweezil Zappa, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Edward Bunker, Erland Van Lidth De Jeude, Jim Brown.



RELATED TEXTS

- Based on the novel The Running Man by Richard Bachman (a Stephen King alias).

- For a better late 80s 'dark future' movie about the evils of 80s consumerist culture, see Robocop.

- Films with similar plots; The 10th Victim, Turkey Shoot, The Million Game, The Condemned, Death Race 2000, Battle Royale, Wedlock and Logan's Run.

- Arnie sci-fi films: The Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation and The 6th Day.

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

Paul Muni stars in this indictment of America's prison system as James Allen, a soldier returning home after WW1. Encourage by the opportunities afforded to him during his military service, James wants to go into construction and not back into his factory job. He finds it hard to get work though, and joins America's great post-war breadline. Soon he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, convicted as an accomplice on a murder-robbery, and incarcerated as part of a chain gang - a brutalising experience that prompts him to escape. Against the odds he rejoins society as a civil engineer but his happiness is shortlived - he's blackmailed into marriage by a golddigging opportunist, and the situation gets so bad that his only escape is to face a return to the chain gang.



I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang was so effective back in 1932 that it prompted widespread reform of the American prison system in the South. This seems to be one of the film's primary aims - to educate the public and condemn the barbaric 'medieval torture' practiced by the chain gangs. I realise that it's based on a true story, but if the point of this film is to promote a reformation of the system then shouldn't Muni's character have been guilty? Either it wants to send a message that Muni is an innocent man given an unfair treatment, or that the system is unfair to everyone. To say both is a bit of a mixed message, and the real-life convict who inspired the film (Robert Burns) was certainly guilty of at least robbery.



That aside, there's some other interesting stuff going on in this film. Steve is essentially punished for thinking outside of the box and not conforming with an increasingly production line-based culture. He wants to make a meaningful contribution to society but his family and community try to browbeat him into giving up this dream. The rest of society is just as closed off, and he soon walks the path of a vagabond, and after that he's thrown into an awful Southern prison that sees him shackled with heavy irons and set to work in the sun for unreasonable stretches of time.



When he finally does get out to work in his dream job he becomes a well-respected member of the community, but the spectre of the prison system rises up to consume him once more - begging the question, if this guy has a lot to offer his country then what good does it do to imprison him? What's the general point of imprisonment? To reform? Or to punish? The powers that be in this film claim that the prison institution discourages crime and builds character - and yet in this case it destroys an upstanding citizen just to make a point.



Some of the imagery and plot beats are a bit heavy-handed but it all works towards creating an effective piece of liberal propaganda. The banging of a judge's gavel turns into a hammer fixing chains to Muni's leg. Steve tries to hock his war medal in an act of desperation but is defeated by the image of a cabinet full of similar medals in the pawn shop. And let's not forget that rabble-rousing cornerstone of the prison film genre: the institution that doesn't play fair. You'll get so fed up with Steve's situation that the supremely ironic ending (where he blows up a bridge to escape after a life of aspiring to build such structures) becomes a vindicating cartharsis. The system fails Steve, so in the end it's society that suffers directly. It's hard to see a film like this getting made under the Hays Code (which came into effect a year after this film was released) and it still stands some 80 years later as a powerful and controversial classic.



DIRECTOR: Mervyn LeRoy

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes, based on the autobiography of Robert Elliott Burns.

KEY ACTORS: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Wilson, Allen Jenkins, Preston Foster, Edward Ellis



RELATED TEXTS:

- I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, the autobiography of real-life WW1 veteran Robert Elliott Burns.

- Also adapted as the telemovie The Man Who Broke 1000 Chains, starring Val Kilmer.

- Brubaker and Scum stand as later examples that criticise western institutions of incarceration.

- More prison films: The Shawshank Redemption, The Big House, The Birdman of Alcatraz, Escape From Alcatraz, A Man Escaped, Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones.



AWARDS

Academy Awards - nominated Best Film, Best Actor (Paul Muni) and Best Sound.

Quantum of Solace

(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)



The Mission

Following directly on from Casino Royale, 007 (Daniel Craig) starts chasing down leads connected to the mysterious and powerful organisation that employed Le Chiffre and drive Vesper Lynd to betrayal and death. He finds evidence of a conspiracy of high-ranking figures, and uncovers a plan to use a puppet government in Bolivia to exploit the country's water reserves for profit.



Jimmy Bond Yo!

James Bond already has a reputation in the espionage world as a particularly hard nut to butt heads with, and eventually gets suspended for going too far. He has a callous attitude towards Vesper's death in Casino Royale but M (Judi Dench) believes that he's blinded by an inconsolable rage. Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric) refers to Bond as 'damaged goods' and MI6's records refer to him as 'difficult to control'. Bond's quest for revenge makes him sympathetic to Camille Montes' own vendetta, and he offers her practical advance about attempting her first kill. Despite his caustic attitude to Vesper he keeps her necklace on him at all times, and when the time comes to enact revenge on her betrayer he lets go of his pain and admits that M is right about Vesper's love for him. He comes out of the other side of his rage as a stronger man, with his humanity (only just) intact.



Bond is particular about what alcohol he drinks, and refuses to stay in a poor hotel - preferring to risk his cover being blown by staying somewhere more upmarket. He can speak Spanish, fly a cargo plane, and poses as an employee of 'Universal Exports'. He actually smiles (which seems like a big deal for Craig's Bond) when he asks retired agent Mathis to help him. He's secure and pragmatic enough to cradle Mathis when the older agent dies, and speaks honestly to him. He's also enough of a realist to not even bother asking an assassin any questions after stabbing him and waiting for him to die.



Craig continues his self-assured portrayal of Bond without much fanfare. A lot of the vulnerability and youthful exuberance of Casino Royale has gone, replaced by a cold and almost shellshocked state that drives him onwards with an unstoppable momentum as he hunts down Dominic and the Quantum organisation. His best moments are those that require him to interact with other characters in a way that doesn't involve violence, though these are very few and far between.



Villainy

The name of the terrorist organisation is revealed as 'Quantum', and the few further details we get about them suggest that they're very much an updated version of SPECTRE from the earliest Bond films: all-powerful and motivated purely by money. They deal with all governments and have no political affinities, and are well-established enough to even have sleeper agents in MI6. Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) returns from Casino Royale to represent the group, but he's a fairly bland character by neccessity so he doesn't make much of an impression.



Quantum of Solace mainly focuses on Dominic Greene (Mathias Almarac), a seemingly-legitimate businessman with connections to Quantum. He's a small frog-eyed man with a penchant for casual tourist-ware (he must shop at the same place as Jack Wade from GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies). His multi-national company is called Greene Planet, and his plan is to finance a Bolivian dictator in exchange for control of the country's water supply. He's influential enough to have had the previous Bolivian leader killed for not cooperating. He rather extravagantly has an MI6 agent killed by smothering her in motor oil (in a homage in Goldfinger).



Greene's main henchman is Elvis (Anatole Taubman), a tall doofussy-looking guy with a bowl haircut. The character gets very little development or screentime, but (according to Taubman) Elvis once lived on the streets and was brought into Quantum by his cousin Dominic Greene. The Bolivian dictator that Greene wants to make a deal with is General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio), an exiled tyrant with a history of barbaric behaviour and a fondness for raping and killing women.



Buddies and Babes M implicitly trusts Bond even when she has to suspend him. She's still as hard and humourless as ever, isn't above torture, and worries that 007 will go on a personal vendetta. She still has a mentor-like relationship with Bond and by the fim's end it becomes clear (mainly from the way Bond talks to her) that she's the closest friend he's ever had (at least in terms of the franchise's history).



Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright, making a return appearance) is now bearded and more world-weary than when we last saw him in Casino Royale. He doesn't like the idea of the U.S. doing business with Dominic Greene, which influences his decision to lie to his superiors in order to protect Bond. He can speak Spanish - a far cry from the ineptness that characterised Leiter in the 1960s and 1970s.



Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini) also returns from Casino Royale. Bond previously thought him to be a traitor but is now convinced of the agent's loyalty. Mathis has retired but comes back to service as a personal favour to Bond, in recognition of the difference between Bond and other agents, and also in recognition of Bond's pain over Vesper.



Camille Montes is an ex-Bolivian secret service agent chasing General Medrano. The General killed her family, so she seeks to kill him in revenge. Other than this motivation, she's fairly forgettable - and Bond doesn't even bother to sleep with her! He does however take a mentor-like role of advisement when he realises she has similar psychological scars to himself. Bond also works with Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton), an inexperienced MI6 agent sent to bring Bond back from Bolivia. Fields doesn't really feature much in the film though as she's killed off fairly quickly.



Locations

The prologue opens in Italy, with Bond cutting it up amongst the cobbled streets and marching religious types while taking in the Siennese architecture. The rest of the film's time is divided between Haiti and Bolivia. Both countries are portrayed fairly unglamourously, which is perfectly in keeping with the gritty and more realistic tone of the Daniel Craig Bond films. The big showcase location, the Atacama Desert in Bolivia, is held back for the climax.



Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade

In keeping with Casino Royale's realism and the idea of starting things from scratch, there aren't really any gadgets to be seen. Bond is able however to open a hotel door by using a credit card. He also knocks out a Greene Planet security guard at the opera, hides him in a disabled toilet, and uses his earpiece to listen in on a Quantum meeting.





Licence to Kill

Okay... Bond shoots a guy in a car chase (causing said car to crash) and shoots a double-agent when an interrogation goes wrong. He dispassionately stabs an attacker in the neck with the same attacker's own knife, shoots several thugs who chase him at the opera, and drops a man off a rooftop (the man actually survives the fall but gets shot by another of Greene's men). He also shoots some corrupt police officers, bullies a plan onto some rocks, and shoots three men in the final attack on Greene's Bolivian headquarters. And finally, demonstrating a rather sick sense of humour, he leaves Dominic in the desert with only a bottle of oil to drink.



Shag-Rate

Bond hooks up with Strawberry Fields almost immediately after she comes to Bolivia to take him back to the UK. In what seems to be a first for the series though, he doesn't actually shag the main 'Bond girl' - Camille Montes - at any point... the furthest their relationship gets is a kiss at the film's end.



Quotes

JAMES BOND (on his deal with the CIA): I promised them Le Chiffre, they got Le Chiffre.

M: They got his body.

JAMES BOND: If they wanted his soul they should've made a deal with a priest.



CAMILLE: Friend of yours?

JAMES BOND: I have no friends.



MATHIS: When you are young it is easy to tell right from wrong, but as you get older it gets harder - the heroes and villains get all mixed up.



JAMES BOND: Oddly right now you're the only person I can trust.

MATHIS: That is odd.



CIA GUY: If we refused to do business with villains we'd have no one left to do business with.



JAMES BOND (referring to M): He tried to kill a friend of mine.

CAMILLE: A woman?

JAMES BOND: Yes, but not what you think.

CAMILLE: Your mother?

JAMES BOND: She likes to think so.



How Does It Rate?

Alright, I'll get the bad stuff out of the way first. Some longtime Bond fans have complained about Quantum of Solace not being true enough to the spirit of the series... these criticisms also stem partially from the idea of rebooting Bond (which was implemented in Casino Royale) and from the way the film prioritises surface-action. I have to confess that a lot of Quantum of Solace does feel like endless action with very little character interplay. How many times can director Marc Foster do that trick where he intercuts Bond-related action with a contrasting event happening nearby (EG. In the Italian prologue, and later at the Opera)? I think once would've been enough. There isn't really much in the way of real drama, aside from a few small (but welcome) scenes that acknowledge the series' newfound sense of continuity (such as any scenes involving Mathis and M). I think Quantum of Solace's deficiencies also come entirely from the fact that it feels too much like the middle act of a bigger story... which is why it's also the shortest of all James Bond films and tends to focus on things of not much consequence.



Having said all that, I still think this is a good addition to the franchise because it continues to break new ground and push things forward. The schemes of Quantum are actually based on real events regarding the privatisation of water in Bolivia, and this echoes concerns about multinational companies exploiting third world countries while the Western governments of the world stand by and do nothing about it (while receiving kickbacks or making deals to stay neutral). I love this aspect of Quantum of Solace, and I'd love to see Bond cutting in further on this kind of realistic evil - it makes him feel like a real hero, one that interacts with real villainy. It's ballsy for the series, and it's like the producers are putting their money where their mouth is.



Also tying into this is the changing new-world political landscape that the series is now exploring in place of the Cold War. Bond now deals with dodgy businesses and corrupt governments, and even MI6 and the CIA are no longer portrayed as entirely trustworthy anymore. The film tries to offset MI6's guilt by blaming certain actions on a higher level of command (IE. The UK government!), and uses the character of Leiter to explore the hypocritical and conflicting foreign policy of the CIA. I love the way that the Quantum organisation is like a more realistic version of SPECTRE as well, they come across as exactly the way a financially-motivated terrorist organisation should (as opposed to the fascistic holy fervoure of SPECTRE in the 1960s, which made zero sense in regards to their motivations). The plans of the bad guys in Quantum of Solace, for perhaps the first time in a James Bond film, actually seem plausible!



I also like the new level of depth in the relationship of M and Bond in both Casino Royale and this film. It's a completely different dynamic in the Craig Bond films to previous entries in the series, and Dench in particular seems to appreciate how much more seriously the script now treats these characters. One thing I've noticed though in these two last films is that there's now a central dilemma at play in the construction of Bond plots - if you move towards this new level of realism is becomes problematic to have Bond engage in as much action as he does while remaining a legitimate MI6 agent. The result is that he's constantly pulling in an opposite direction to MI6, the Government and M... I'm just not sure if they can sustain this level of friction in a credible manner for a third film. There does seem to be a sense though that despite the stripped-back 'Year Zero' approach the series is moving slowly towards the traditional kind of Bond film - evident here in the increasingly over-the-top action sequences. It's not quite there yet but in comparison to Casino Royale there's definitely a few steps in that direction. If they do decide to bring back the gadgets, Moneypenny, Q and more outlandish villains, then it will be interesting to see how they integrate all this with the feel and tone of Daniel Craig's era of James Bond.



Visit my James Bond page.



DIRECTOR: Marc Foster

WRITER/SOURCE: Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Joshua Zetuma. Based on characters created by Ian Fleming.

KEY ACTORS: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Olga Kurylenko, Mathias Almarac, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini, Gemma Arterton, Anatole Taubman, Joaquin Cosio



RELATED TEXTS

- The title Quantum of Solace comes from a James Bond short story by Ian Fleming, but there is no similarity between the actual content of the story and the film.

- The events of this film follow directly on from Casino Royale.



AWARDS

BAFTAs - nominated Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

A Darkling Plain

A Darkling Plain is the fourth and final book in the speculative teen science-fiction series by Philip Reeve that has come to be known as The Hungry City Chronicles. Strangely, this final installment was given a minimal release in Australia (the other three novels in the series were given a prominent push by local bookstores in the two years preceding), so I had to get it ordered in. Anyway, before I continue with the review, here are links to my reviews of the previous three novels... Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold and Infernal Devices.



The events of this book pick up some six months or so after Infernal Devices. All the heroic (and, in Pennyroyal's case, less-than-heroic) characters have moved on throughout the much-changed landscape of the distant future. Wren and her father, Tom, have taken to the Bird Roads, travelling and trading... Tom's heart has become weak and his life is coming to an end, and Wren misses her one-time boyfriend Theo. Theo has gone back to his home in Africa, a stately static settlement that is fiercely anti-tractionist. He pines for Wren and no longer feels sympathetic for the violent movement known as the Green Storm. Tom's estranged wife Hester has become the Black Angel, a much-feared bounty hunter who traverses the African desert with her faithful companion, the stalker Shrike. Meanwhile, the shy and pacifist scientist Oenone has married General Naga, leader of the Green Storm, and has caused rifts within the organisation with her peaceful influence. The loveably despicable Professor Pennyroyal is lounging amongst the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft, an alliance of traction cities dedicated to destroying the Green Storm, and continues to attract fame and fortune with his exaggerated tales of adventure and daring. And little Fishcake, the former Lost Boy left alone at the end of Infernal Devices, has rebuilt the Stalker Fang... which could spell doom and destruction for one and all.



As you can see from the previous paragraph, there are a lot of seperate storylines and characters here. And these are just the major characters returning from previous novels... throw in a shifty and intriguing rogue tractionist named Wolf Kobold, who pilots the burrowing suburb Harrowbarrow, and a range of other supporting characters both new and old, and you have an intricate series of intertwined subplots that help flesh this novel out to twice the size of any of the previous installments in the series. Not only does A Darkling Plain act as a direct sequel to Infernal Devices, but it also links directly back to Mortal Engines with it's satisfying big surprise twist (which I won't spoil here) - helping to give some closure to this epic saga of traction-mounted cities, warring factions, colourful rogues and undead cyborgs.



Reeve certainly has his work cut out for him, opting to include so many recurring characters... I'd recommend this book only to those familiar with the others in the series, and you might need to refresh your memory on the previous books to ensure you can keep track of who is who while you're at it too. I think he may have stretched himself with electing to involve so many different characters, Pennyroyal and Fishcake in particular seem only vaguely neccessary to the plot. Also, with stretching the story over so many different characters and subplots, we don't get to see anywhere near as much of Hester and Shrike as we might've liked... they're pretty much my favourite characters, easily the most original of an impressive bunch, and I wished I got to see far more of them in the book.



Reeves has a pretty big canvas to work with though and he doesn't disappoint. He gives us big battles, devastating treachery, heartwarming acts of bravery and various other exciting turns of events that you certainly don't see coming at any point. The ending works very well and rounds off the quartet with a certain degree of finality, and the final scenes are remarkably elegiac and memorable. Reeves certainly achieves a worthy wrap up to this wonderful series and it annoys me a fair bit that these books aren't more popular in Australia... they're involving, full of scares, laughs and adventure, and damn well more original than, say, Harry Potter or Eragon. If you're looking for a good piece of speculative fiction with elements of science fiction, fantasy and high adventure, then I implore you to go to your nearest bookstore and grab a copy each of Mortal Engines and Predator's Gold... if you're not hooked after those then I dare say we aren't even remotely on the same wavelength!

The Last Picture Show

"Could be worse"

"You could say that just about anything I reckon"

Peter Bogdanovich caused a stir back in 1970 when he wrote and directed this bittersweet coming-of-age tale that peeks under the veneer of America's idyllic 1950s midwest to reveal recognisable lives of pain, heartache, broken promises and squandered hopes and dreams. Featuring breakout roles from Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd and Randy Quaid as well as Oscar-winning turns from then-underrated character actors Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson, The Last Picture Show is rightfully held in high esteem as one of the defining films of America's golden age of 70s filmmaking. It could arguably be said that every Oscar-baiting drama about American suburbia or small town life made since (EG. Little Children, Revolutionary Road, Blue Sky) has been walking in this film's footsteps.



Bogdanovich takes a dusty old football-obsessed town in the midwest and uses it to examine the changing times of the early 1950s alongside the changing lives of the town's teenagers as they come of age. It's a familiar world of bored kids looking for excitement, lonely neglected women, and listless men eager for sex but forthcoming with little else. Bottoms plays Sonny, the audience's identification figure, a naive everyman who hooks up with an older, married woman (Cloris Leachman) and learns some hard lessons about thoughtlessness and doing the right thing. Bridges and Shepherd play less sympathetic figures... they're essentially the doomed future of the town, Shepherd is destined to become a troublemaking floozy like her mother, and Bridges is the kind of hotheaded roughneck that keeps the town's spirit of callousness alive.



Shepherd has a particularly interesting character arc as Jacy. We watch her journey from prissy good girl to sexualised cat; a young woman learning that her looks are her only currency in this dead-end town. Other memorable characters include Lester (Randy Quaid), a would-be sophisticate hamstrung by his oafish small-town idiosyncracies, and Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), the town's only apparent tie to a past where heroic morality once stood tall. Johnson in particular is a perfect piece of casting, he represents America and the Old West, and comes across as a sensitive, less polished version of John Wayne.





I think The Last Picture Show might actually be the first use of black and white cinematography as a intentional technique for evoking a past era. Bogdanovich was (and still is) a well-known film buff and historian, and you can see this in the kind of film he's made here. Essentially, this film is about what the past was like vs. what we think or wish it was like. Through the young leads he captures that nostalgic feeling of youth... our youth is that time when the world is still fresh and hasn't lost its shine or that sense of endless possibility. There's a point in our teen years when we become aware of just how open the world around us is, and then shortly after that (for some of us) we grow disallusioned by the restrictive reality of things - we see the tarnish that renders everything dull, or the way our environment or upbringing blocks certain opportunities. This film is about that. We like to idealise earlier eras like the 1950s but, as The Last Picture Show depicts, they're every bit as full of sadness and tragedy as our modern times. For an example in the context of the film, see the withdrawn religious kid who turns out to be a pedophile!



The use of black and white is also quite effective because it lulls the viewer into a sense of nostalgic security before taking us to the drive-in where a girl casually takes off her bra. It comes as quite a shock due to the context and execution, with Bogdanovich combining his love for classic Hollywood with European neorealist sensibilities. The impact of The Last Picture Show in 1970 was mostly due to it's unexploitative use of increased sex and nudity. It's not exactly gratuitous but it was extensive and frank enough to be groundbreaking for mainstream America at the time. Bogdanovich never had another critical hit quite like The Last Picture Show, he slid away into partial obscurity as film trends moved further and further away from his own interests in subverting and celebrating the filmstyles of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. I dare say that everything he ever wanted to say as a director was said in The Last Picture Show. It's Bogdanovich the film fan writ large, and the film stands as a highly influential piece of 1970s filmmaking.



DIRECTOR: Peter Bogdanovich

WRITER/SOURCE: Peter Bogdanovich and Larry McMutry. Based on a novel by Larry McMutry.

KEY ACTORS: Timothy Bottoms, Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Eilleen Brennan, Randy Quaid, Clu Gulager, Sam Bottoms



RELATED:

- The semi-autobiographical novel The Last Picture Show by Larry McMutry.

- Bogdanovich reunited most of the cast for a poorly-recieved sequel in 1990, Texasville.

- Nostalgia aint what it used to be! See also American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, The Myth of the American Sleepover, Revolutionary Road and Grease

- Coming of age in another time, but from an Australian perspective: The Year My Voice Broke.



AWARDS

Academy Awards - won Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson) and Best Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman). Nominated for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Suporting Actor (Jeff Bridges), Best Supporting Actress (Ellen Burstyn) and Best Cinematography.

BAFTAs - won Best Supporting Actor (Johnson), Best Supporting Actress (Leachman) and Best Screenplay. Nominated for Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress (Eileen Brennan).

Golden Globes - won Best Supporting Actor (Johnson). Nominated for Best Film (Drama), Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Leachman), Best Supporting Actress (Ellen Burstyn) and Most Promising Newcomer (Cybill Shepherd).

Crumb

Your interest in this documentary will probably depend entirely on your interest in the subversive cartoonist Robert Crumb. Crumb is an odd and tortured genius who lives at the mercy of strange sexual impulses and a healthy disregard for American cultural mores. Director Terry Zwigoff uses this as a jumping off point to explore the role that sex and obsession can play in art, and the boundaries of what can be deemed acceptable under the label of 'art'. Crumb inhabits the daggy, debauched and timewarped corners of American society, both the man himself and his work rejects conformity, which (at the very least) makes for interesting conversation.



One of the more magnetic aspects of Crumb's story is his family, and the way they helped create this bizarre figure. The documentary starts on the topic of his family before looking at Crumb's rise as an influential figure in the world of comics and pop art. Most of the film focuses on the way he embraced the unpopular aspects of culture and owned his status as an outsider, and Zwigoff invites critics from both sides of the line (for and against) to deconstruct Crumb's most controversial work (the stuff that plays on racial stereotypes or gets all problematic with depictions of femininity). You watch this and it makes for a fairly straightforward documentary, and then in the last half an hour or so the focus swings back onto Crumb's two brothers and that's when things really get weird.



Carl Crumb is a hermit-like figure living with his mother whilst heavily sedated, re-reading the same pieces of victorian literature over and over while contemplating suicide. Maxon Crumb is even stranger, a sex-offending schizophrenic who paints and live on his own in a californian hovel. By extension, these two guys makes Robert Crumb look like the normal one in the family! Crumb's compulsive collecting of old ragtime music and pursuit of certain sexual fetishes seems quite quaint by comparison. His family and upbringing turns out to be every bit as eyebrow-raising and borderline insane as his comics though... after all, the Crumb brothers were raised by a mother who used the threat of an enema as a discipine measure!





As with all documentaries, Crumb features a slew of information that is collected over a period of time before being arranged into a cohesive narrative. It would be just about impossible to film Crumb's story in a linear fashion after the fact, but what we get on screen is a linear impression of this guy's life. It's no mean feat to assemble something like this, and Zwigoff spent a staggering 9 years putting this documentary together. That kind of dedication to a single project isn't exactly common, and the length of time involved seems to have only served to help create an acutely observed facsimile of a life's work. There's no real sense that this film took 9 years to film, and that's what I found impressive and interesting.



On a sidenote, I think Robert Crumb has a lot to answer for. I enjoy his work and find it quite funny in a slightly-caustic and heavily ironic way, even the way he thumbs his nose at the establishment is funny because it's not always completely direct. His style of cartooning has given rise to at least two generations (Harvey Pekar, Daniel Clowes) of self-obsessed wunderkinds though, Crumb's more autobiographical efforts seemed to spark a whole movement of comics artists seeking to document their mundane lives through the artform of cartooning. Even Crumb's wife thinks everyone wants to know all about her life, with her own brand of narcissistic comics given a small space in the documentary. I just thought that when Crumb did it, it was new, and the guy had some imagination. When some of these other chumps do it it's old and unoriginal (I'm not bagging Pekar or Clowes in particular, but I definitely am bagging out Crumb's wife). It's like livejournal in comic form, and no one really wants to see that. Or maybe that's just me. Hey, is anyone reading this?



DIRECTOR: Terry Zwigoff

KEY FIGURES: Robert Crumb, Maxon Crumb, Carl Crumb, Aline Kominsky



RELATED TEXTS:

- Zwigoff films: Louie Bluie (a blues documentary), Ghost World, Bad Santa and Art School Confidential.

- See also the excellent semi-fictionalised documentary American Splendour.

- Robert Crumb's most famous works include Keep on Truckin', Fritz the Cat, The Confessions of Robert Crumb and The Book of Genesis.



AWARDS

Sundance Film Festival - won Best Film (3rd place).

Nighthawks

"You go to a better life"

We think of Sylvester Stallone now as one of the key action heroes of the 1980s, 90s and 00s, but unlike Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Segal he didn't start out in this mold. The modern action film (as we know it) didn't really come about until the 1980s, so apart from his rags-to-riches routine in Rocky, Stallone didn't really seem to have a very clear purpose as an actor in the 1970s. He floated between odd dramatic projects like F.I.S.T. and Paradise Alley before he finally found a successful career trajectory in the 1980s. That trajectory starts with Nighthawks, a cop-thriller that is arguably the first film to cast him as an action hero.



Nighthawks isn't a particularly well-remembered film but it's fairly good as far as these sorts of films go. Stallone is the hip New York city-jiving cop who's at one with the streets; a nice guy who's more Serpico than Dirty Harry. This makes quite a contrast with the European villain; a fanatical and cold-blooded terrorist named Wolfgar (Rutger Hauer), who's more or less the progenitor to Euro bad guys in the Die Hard films. Nighthawks is a cop film that looks at how terrorism works and why it must be fought (still pretty topical some 30 years later). It doesn't have the best sense of pace or plotting but Stallone and Hauer are great in their respective roles, both young and hungry enough to put in some thoughtful performances.



Stallone is interesting to watch because his character isn't your typical trigger-happy man of action. He stops his partner (Billy Dee Williams) from resorting to violence on more than one occasion, and wants nothing more than just to get on with living a regular life. It's not a showy role like John Rambo or Rocky Balboa, most of the time Stallone underplays it in accordance with the fact that he's meant to be a regular joe just doing his job. Williams on the other hand comes across rather unsympathetically as the partner, a typically two-dimensional angry black cop. Together their policework entails a special and unlikely brand of entrapment where Stallone disguises himself as an easy target on the street (a defenceless woman, or a rich businessman) so that they can bust petty crooks directly.





Wolfgar is a German but he adapts a variety of accents and disguises as part of his cover. He starts out the film as a liberal communist stereotype; a guitar-slinging, bespectacled and bearded leftie-type. But this isn't who he really is - he's actually a highly dangerous man with a flair for seduction. This plays into the American Cold War-orientated fear that commmunists walk amongst 'us', with his various lady-friends having no inkling of his true nature. His lefty disguise at the film's beginning also explores the fear that hardline terrorists exploit the soft left as a place in which to hide, suggesting that leftism shouldn't be tolerated to any degree as it can harbour dangerous fringe-dwellers. Hauer (as usual in his earlier roles) is suitably mesmerising as the character. He gets all the film's best scenes, his British accent is fairly good but his attempt at American comes out pretty mangled and unconvincing. My main criticism of the character is that his motivations are rather nebulous and undefined - we never find out exactly who he represents or why, just that he's a terrorist that sees himself as a political hero.



At one point Wolfgar demands the release of political prisoners but they seem to be a variety of nationalities that only suggest communism as a shared trait. Maybe I'm too far removed from the Cold War context, but I found this to be lacking in detail. In the 1980s 'terrorist' was no doubt a byword for 'communist', and so the film makes no effort to offer any internal context. It's similar to the way films in the 00s seem to feel it's unnecessary to offer any background to fictional versions of post 9/11 terrorists. I find it fairly problematic, it's short-sighted because the filmmakers have no consideration for history... they seem to think the issues of the day will last forever and that future audiences will automatically know that 'communist' and 'terrorist' are interchangeable terms. I understand that films reflect the attitudes of their times, but there's a propaganda element at play in the way Nighthawks looks at terrorism (00s films too) that's a little too obvious and generalised for my taste.



You'll be sure to find all the cop movie cliches and tropes in Nighthawks - the doomed partner, the cop who lost his wife because he's married to the job, the shouty and uncooperative boss, the rogue hero who's also a loose cannon, the foreign and psychopathic villain, etc. This is part of the fun though, and this is very much an action film made in the 1980s - well before the genre got neutered and became curiously bloodless. Nighthawks isn't non-stop violence but when violence does appear it's brutal and visceral - completely at odds with what mainstream Hollywood serves up now. This is also a film that thinks it's believable that cops in New York carry around shotguns and it has a cool finishing act that, while it seems paced poorly, at least comes as a surprise.



DIRECTOR: Bruce Malmouth

WRITER/SOURCE: David Shaber and Paul Sylbert. Originally planned as The French Connection III.

KEY ACTORS: Sylvester Stallone, Rutger Hauer, Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Persis Khambatta, Nigel Davenport, Joe Spinell



RELATED TEXTS:

- The French Connection, to which this film was originally meant to be a sequel.

- Cold War-era terrorism: The Day of the Jackal, Black Sunday, The Falcon and the Snowman.

- See also The Seige, for more on terrorism in New York City, and Die Hard.

- The ultimate criminals-hold-the-city-to-ransom action movie: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Double Indemnity

Two creative giants, Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, teamed up to create the daddy of all film noirs in Double Indemnity. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray were cast against type to play the scheming star-crossed lovers in this dark and twisty tale of murder, suspicion and insurance. Stanwyck had previously only really played 'good girl' roles and was hesitant to take on a trashy femme fatale character, whereas McMurray had made his name in light comedy and didn't feel confident that audiences would be able to take him seriously. The film remains the quintessential example of film noir today, frequently cited in 'best films of all time' lists by a variety of critics, film fans and IMDB.



Walter (McMurray) is an insurance salesman. He's this regular guy who gets pulled into a web of intrigue and used after making one single, flawed decision. This decision (as is typical for film noir) represents a transgression of morality, being his choice to pursue an affair with a married woman, Mrs. Dietrichson (Stanwyck). Mrs. Dietrichson is the film's femme fatale, a dangerous and mysterious figure who attracts the audience's distrust whilst simultaneously attracting Walter. The third major character is Keats (Edward G. Robinson), Walter's sharp but good-natured boss. In a way, Keats represents society itself, a friend who will be forced to give Walter up to the law if or when he learns of his involvement in a murder. Keats is Edward G. Robinson's earliest supporting role... he plays the problem-sol ver with a high degree of intellectualism and charisma; a role closer to the real life Robinson than any of his more famous gangster roles.



Keats frequently talks about the 'little man' inside him, a concept that relates to instinct. It's also actually shorthand for the idea of conscience - he's the film's moral compass, which links into Keats' role as a symbol of society. Film noir plots almost always concern events spiralling out of control, and Double Indemnity is no different, with themes relating to parasnoia, conscience and the inevitability of punishment. The quote at the top of this review relates to the sense of inevitability inherent in film noir. It's often one of the genre's rules that events should spin off horribly from one bad mistake or one unstoppable piece of bad luck. In this case it involves the introduction of certain complications that arise while the characters try to carry out their perfect murder - such as a man on the back of a train who shouldn't be there, a car that won't start, a co-worker's kernel of suspicion, etc. All these things come from the central starting point of any film noir worth its salt - one character's transgression of morality and the price they pay for it.





Wilder and Chandler make use of several useful techniques to reinforce their story. The most important is that the tale is told in flashback, allowing for a defeated voiceover that sets an ominous tone of foreboding. The dialogue itself is also full of double entendres and metaphors, signalling that for these characters nothing is as it seems. The opening sequence also introduces Walter from behind, the camera following his back for a while before finally revealing him in long shot - a technique that establishes him as a man with something to hide. This can be taken both literally in the context of the scene (he's hiding a gunshot wound) and metaphorically in the context of the film (the camera is positioned in a way that keeps him hidden from the audience).



A level of depth (or layering) is suggested by starkly silhouettic cinematography and a dark, stirring string score, and - finally - the entire film is rammed full of foreshadowing to further support the ominous tone. This includes the delayed kind of foreshadowing, such as the menacing shadow of a man on crutches moving towards the camera during the opening credits, and the immediate kind, such as Walter talking about an anklet on Mrs. Dietrichson's leg before the camera cuts to her descending the stairs and drawing our attention to said jewellery.



Double Indemnity was controversial and acclaimed at the time of its release because it broke new ground regarding the anatomy of a murder, examining such a crime in previously unmatched detail. This was only made possible by making certain creative decisions in accordance to the then-active Hays Code. The Hays Code stated that no bad deed in a film could go unpunished, so this forced the development of the film noir genre - a response to this stifling environment that made use of a specific set of rulres and tropes to explore crime and its consequences. It's highly unlikely that film noir could've happened without this heavy degree of censorship, so Double Indemnity is very much a product of its time. It could never be made today (even if the Hays Code was still active) due to the rise of forensics, so if you watch it, settle yourself in for a historically-grounded and incredibly tense ride.



DIRECTOR: Billy Wilder

WRITER/SOURCE: Raymond Chandler. Based on a book by James M. Cain (which was based on real events in the 1920s).

KEY ACTORS: Fred McMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers



RELATED TEXTS:

- Double Indemnity, a pulp crime novel by James M. Cain that started out as a magazine serial in 1943.

- The Postman Always Rings Twice, a 1940s film noir also based on a James M. Cain novel.

- Double Indemnity, 1970s television remake starring Richard Crenna and Samantha Egger.

- The 1990s film noir spoof Fatal Instinct parodies parts of Double Indemnity.

- Billy Wilder returned to similar territory more than a decade later with Witness For ther Prosecution.

- For more early film noirs, see: The Woman in the Window, Stranger on the Third Floor, Out of the Past, The Maltese Falcon, The Killers, Gilda and Laura.



AWARDS

Academy Awards - nominated for Best Film, Best Actress (Barbara Stanwyck), Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Music and Best Screenplay.

Captain America: The First Avenger

There's only so many times I can sit down and write a complete review of a Marvel comic film. Even though they might have some major superficial differences at times (this one has Norse Gods in it, this one's set in WWII, this one teams up a bunch of superheroes, etc) they're still pretty formulaic at heart. You either like these movies or you don't. I enjoy them for the most part, provided they don't get too weighed down with continuity (this seems to be the growing problem with some Marvel films, see my review of Iron Man 2). I think to some degree you have to see these films on the big screen... I'm fairly sure that my enjoyment of Captain America (and previously, Thor) has a lot to do with the way the atmosphere of a darkened theatre with minimal distractions can suck one into the spectacle these films put a lot of energy into creating.



Anyway, here are some loose thoughts on Captain America...

• The overall film is tonally perfect - it hits that perfect series of notes that taps into pop-culture nostalgia for rousing Allied WWII propaganda, and does so without being overly trite or hollow. It's not afraid to make the audience laugh but it's also serious enough to use the gloomy setting properly.
• I had some reservations about Chris Evans at first. He seems to be the go-to guy for comic book characters these days (Fantastic Four, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, The Losers), and I wasn't particularly enamoured by his performances as Johnny Storm. I have to say though that I thought he did really well as Captain America... he gave the character a very necessary sense of humility. He looked good in the costume too, even if it did make him look a bit like a big gay fireman.
  
  
• The special effects used to make Evans look small and weedy for his pre-serum scenes were really good. Like, amazingly good. After seeing previews I thought I would be distracted by it, but I actually forgot that I was watching special effects after a few minutes and I bought the wonder of his transformation into the real Chris Evans; bulked up and ridiculously cut.
• Hugo Weaving - what a great actor. I don't mean that he's some kind of theatrical god, he's just such a versatile and entertaining performer. The Red Skull could've been quite silly in execution, but Weaving owns it and actually quite frightening in the role without having to resort to hysterics. I hope we see him in the role again at some point, I have a feeling that there is a lot more he could do with it if given the chance.
• Nazi occultism. I'm a sucker for anything that deals with this, it's just such a fascinating area of history/science. The idea that a fascistic superforce could conquer most of Europe whilst exploring the supernatural is both bizarre and more than a little scary. Captain America automatically had me excited just by featuring this.
• The supporting cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones. They're all great, and (unlike the mess of characters in Iron Man 2) they all have an integral part to play in the film.

That's all I'll say. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'd be happy to see more historically-themed superhero films. I think there was some bravery in Marvel's willingness to set a comic book movie in WWII, considering that war films don't draw the same kind of crowds that superhero movies normally do. A rousing success!



DIRECTOR: Joe Johnston

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Based on the Marvel comic.

KEY ACTORS: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Jones, Stanley Tucci, Dominic Cooper, Samuel L. Jackson, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Kenneth Choi, JJ Feild, Richard Armitage



RELATED TEXTS:

- Obviously, the Captain America comics, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941.

- This newest version of Captain America ties in with other recent Marvel films - Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and Thor. The character from these films are set to team up in The Avengers.

- Captain America has sporadically appeared on television from the 1960s through to the modern day, in both animated and live-action form.

- The character was adapted and featured for a serial in 1944, Captain America.

- In 1973, Captain America (along with Spiderman and a Mexican wrestler named Santo) was featured (without permission) in the Turkish film Three Mighty Men.

- A feature film, Captain America, was released in 1990 (starring Matt Salinger, son of the famous author J. D. Salinger). It was a critical bomb and subsequently went straigh to video.

- Director Joe Johnston also made the cult wartime action adventure The Rockateer, which seems to be a major factor in why he was chosen to direct Captain America: The First Avenger.

Dracula

Tod Browning's version of Dracula for Universal Studios probably shouldn't be underestimated in terms of influence on later films about vampires. It's easy to be underwhelmed by its adherence to Bram Stoker's uneven horror classic, the way Dracula disappears and reappears from the plot or the lack of an easiy defined hero. A lot of cliches (or tropes) have their origins in this horror classic however, and Bela Lugosi's creepy and unsettling performance as the Count echoes through the ages as an icon of cinema history. I found it hard to divorce myself from the impact this has had on pop culture, but I tried to imagine I was watching it for the first time back in 1931.



We start Dracula's story with the transformation of Renfield from a regular guy into a pathetic and crazed wretch. Through Renfield we witness the horror of Dracula's power - a man able to reduce people to this regressive state, and Renfield becomes the European Count's emissary as they both travel to England. It was a little hard for me to grasp why Dracula wanted to go to England at first, I think (but I'm not sure) that he went to get himself a new wife - which is pretty funny when you think about it. "Hi, I'm Dracula, I'm going to travel all the way across Europe to get myself some lovin!" That can't be right, can it? As you can see, there are a few points in Dracula where I was less than sure what exactly was going on. How did Van Helsing know so much about Dracula anyway?





As with all eras, horror has always been an easily-achieved form of film entertainment for the masses. Director Tod Browning became one of the early masters of the genre, in this case pursuing an interest in the macabre and bizarre to bring forth ideas of boxes filled with earth, and a man's preoccupation and consumption of bugs and other small creatures. Browning brings a number of elements together to help synergise a series of visually arresting ideas that help build an atmosphere of foreboding. Here are some examples:

• An animal motif. In Dracula's castle we see rats, bats and even armadillos (!)
• Dracula's ability to transform into a bat. This is one vampire tradition that's disappeared in more recent years, and it's strange (as a modern viewer) to see it used so seriously and frequently in Dracula.
• Renfield as Dracula's messenger. This seems to be used as both a practial AND stylistic necessity. It helps minimalise the amount of dialogue spoken by the non-English speaking Lugosi, and also serves to make the taciturn monster more menacing and unknowably inhuman.
• A hand snaking out of a coffin. This image has since become synonymous with the undead, juxtaposing an object associated with the dead (a coffin) with a living hand to invoke feelings of horror due to unnaturalness.
• Ominous fog, and howling wolves used to signal danger.
• A limp body tumbling down a long flight of stairs.
• Superstitious villagers whose Old World beliefs turn out to be founded. This taps into ideas of horror associated with the gap between history and the modern world.
  
  

Of course, the majority of the film's success can probably be attitributed to Lugosi's breakout performance as Count Dracula. Lugosi is the cinematic origin-point of the cliched view of Dracula, an urbane monster who sinisterly hides his evil behind manners and sexual allure. Lugosi's line delivery is carefully enunciated in his thick Hungarian accednt, making each line sound odd and demonically alien (EG. When he hears the howl of a wolf he rewnarks in gleeful appreciation, "Children of the night... listen to them, what music they make"). We never get a real explanation of who or what Dracula is, or how he has these powers, only that he's an "undead creature whose life has been unnaturally prolonged", and Lugosi's best moments come in the moments where Dracula's well-mannered facade drops away due to a mirror or a cross, and he hisses or recoils like the base animal he really is. Modern viewers will probably be upset by the fact that the monster's death takes place just off camera, and the ending feels a bit like an anticlimax as a result. But there's no denying the power of the film's iconic villain or the creepy collusion of so many atmospheric ideas to create a dozen tropes and cliches that are now almost inseperable from vampires in fiction.



DIRECTOR: Tod Browning

WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Garrett Fort. Based on the play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John F. Balderstone, which was based on the famous novel of the same name.

KEY ACTORS: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan



RELATED TEXT:

- The novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker.

- The only earlier film version of the tale that still survives is Nosferatu, a silent film from 1922.

- Other famous early vampire films: Les Vampires and Vampyr.

- Other famous film versions of Dracula include: the Hammer production Dracula, made in 1958 and starring Christopher Lee; Dracula, a late 1970s version starring Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, and Dracula, a version directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1992 and starring Gary Oldman.

- Universal studios sequelised their Lugosi-starring version of the story with Dracula's Daughter, Son of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Lugosi only reprised his role in the last of these.

- Tod Browning's other horror classics include Freaks, The Unknown and the lost film London After Midnight.

The Quiet Man

"We Danihers are a fighting people".

John Ford's glowing tribute to his ancestral homeland puts John Wayne out of his element as Sean, an Irish-American returning to his roots in 1920s Innisfree (Castlemaine), Ireland. It's a gentle comedy of the Irish character; painting a picture of peaceful countryside, the drinking of black beers, village gossip and an unswaying respect for the church. Beautifully shot on location in technicolour, and featuring a typically Fordian cast of craggy character actors, the films plays out a romance between Wayne's gentle giant and a fiery-tempered Maureen O'Hara.

What I found most interesting about this Ford-Wayne collaboration was that it puts John Wayne into a story that lets his character relax and breathe a little. For once he isn't fighting a war or enforcing western law, he's a man trying to live a normal life. It's a different kind of territory for Wayne, as Sean he's cast as a man who can't (or won't) fight, so the central conflict between himself and Will Daniher (Victor McLaglen) takes on an extra dimension. Sean's battle is one of hearts and minds - Wayne can't conquer McLaglen with brawn and bravado, so he has to engage with him in other ways. Of course, this all goes out the window for the epic brawling climax (Ford seems to think that all problems are actually solved by fighting) but the social texture of the film leading up to this is still fairly pacifistic by design and nature.

Besides the cast (who I'll get back to), the other best facets of this award-winning film are it's tongue-in-cheek explanation of Irish traditions (wedding dowries and wifebeating), it's general humour, and the shock twist masterfully played out via the open horror on Wayne's face in an unexpected flashback scene. I laughed out loud a few times, sucvh as when a townswoman offers Sean a stick to "beat the lovely lady with", or when Michaleen (Barry Fitzgerald) jumps to the (natural) wrong conclusion after seeing Sean's bed busted completely after his wedding night. Another moment that's so cheesy that I couldn't help but laugh is when a man leaps from his deathbed to join the spectators lining the street to get a good view of Sean and Will's fight. Much of Sean's troubles throughout the film come via the mild scandals he causes with his American ways - he essentially has to learn to be Irish in order to win the right to a happy life in Innisfree.

The pairing of Wayne and O'Hara is one of the great romantic couplings of golden era Hollywood, and O'Hara is compelling as the stouthearted maid intent on a traditional courtship and marriage. It's strange though to see Wayne so gentle for once, with O'Hara bringing out a seldom-seen sensitive side in him. The timbre in his voice is so soft it's like he doesn't even know he's being filmed. The bravado is gone, he's vulnerable as he simply says "I'm sorry", and it's a more real performance in that it also shows him engaging in the same kind of behaviour as us mere mortals. He quarrels with his wife about domestic matters, and he even gets the shits and walks off at one point - wandering around and chucking rocks at stuff as he smokes cigarette after cigarette. As usual, he starts out the film as a bachelor (why did Wayne aways play bachelor-type characters so often?), and a lot of his mission is to actively court Mary-Kate. It's perfectly played though, the drama generated by the supporting cast (and the location) makes it a fun and attractive experience. It makes you want to go to Ireland and soak up its pastoral culture, something that many fans of the film have since done. Perhaps that's its greatest legacy of all.

HIGHLIGHTS:
- Mary-Kate literally makes Sean chase her across the countryside as part of their courtship.
- In a reverse of this, Sean later drags her through mud and dirt with the whole village in tow.
- This quote, "Have the good manners not to hit your husband until he can hit you back!"
- Sean gets so angry on his wedding night that he looks like he's going to actually rape his wife! Angry Wayne is so scary, it's a shame that he never capitalised on this to play a villain, though I guess his mythic 'good' image was part of why he seemed so scary whenever he looks on the verge of losing his restraint.
- The heartwarming final reel where all the townsfolk (the Catholic priest included) all pretend to be Prostestants so their village's minister can be kept in town by his superiors. It's an incredibly inspiring vision of Ireland's mixed-faith heritage, if highly unlikeable.

DIRECTOR: John Ford
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Frank S. Nugent and Richard Llewellyn. Based on a short story by Maurice Walsh.
KEY ACTORS: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Victor McLaglen, Mildred Natwick, Ward Bond, Arthur Shields, Francis Ford, Charles FitzSimons

RELATED TEXTS:
- Based on a short story from a 1930s edition of The Saturday Evening Post by Maurice Walsh.
- Ford, Wayne and O'Hara also collaborated together on Rio Grande and The Wings of Eagles.
- John Ford also paid tribute to Wales in a previous Oscar-decorated film, How Green Was My Valley. Ford also made a series of Irish dramas in his silent film days: Morther Machree, Four Sons and Hangman's House.
- Donnybrook!, a musical inspired by The Quiet Man. Also, Innisfree, a documentary about the making of The Quiet Man.
- Other films about outsiders coming to colourful, idyllic rural communities: I Know Where I'm Going, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, The Field, Local Hero, The Dish and Spotswood.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Director and Best Cinematography (Colour). Also nominated for Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Victor McLaglen), Best Writing, Best Sound and Best Art Direction.
Golden Globes - nominated Best Director and Best Score.
Venice Film Festival - won International Award and OCIC Award.