Cowboys and Aliens

Jon Favreau started out as "one of us", a film geek who was playing in Hollywood's sandpit and proving that the fans could successfully run the asylum (EG. Iron Man, Zathura). But now it seems that he's losing that common touch as he makes more annd more films. Cowboys and Aliens seems like such a high concept winner on paper (especially with a cast co-led by Harrison Ford in a very welcome return to sci-fi/adventure territory), but all it really manages is the basics. Favreau makes a fun but ultimately soulless sci-fi tribute to the western.

Let's have a look at what they do get right. Well, the best thing about it is Ford playing such a crusty character. It's great to see him chewing up the scenary in a genre mash-up like this, he seems to be really enjoying himself again (for once). Film geeks often like to speculate on how roles might be better cast in hot projects, but this is one case where someone got it right the first time. This is purely film geek dream-casting, and the rest of the supporting roles are also filled with great actors - Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, etc. Unfortunately most of these guys end up feeling underwritten or underused. It's all stretched that litttle bit too thin.

I actually liked the way that the film wheels out nearly every western trope imaginable, though inevitably this just goes to show who this film is really aimed at: people who see westerns as just a bunch of cliches. In my mind a great western/sci-fi mash-up should be equally true to both genres, and if you're going to do the western justice then you need to respect it enough to move beyond the cliches and make a decent film in its own right. Here are the tropes I'm talking about:

• The powerful rancher who runs the town.
• Indians.
  
• Bandits.
• The sheriff who stands against the townspeople.
• A posse.
• The ineffectual barman with a Mexican wife.
• The town bully who's also a coward.
• The tough preacher.
• The man with no name (Daniel Craig literally plays a man who doesn't know his own name). This character is also a bit of an anti-hero with a dark past.
• The impressionable kid who idolises the hero.

I did like how the aliens (who are a bit like insectoid versions of the trolls from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings) were pretty much the 1880s version of aliens... instead of having lasers they had high tech lassoes, and instead of representing our fear of terrorism or the cold war or whatever, they're basically just prospectors from space. It would've been interesting to see this idea developed a bit more, but at the end of the day this film feels like all it needs to do to get by is to just combine cowboys and aliens (like the title says). It should be a great film, but it isn't. It's a novelty and a gimmick and nothing more. There's too many characters and not enough depth given to any of them (including Harrison Ford's character), and it was overall a wasted opportunity.

DIRECTOR: Jon Favreau
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orcini, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, with story input from Steve Oedekerk. Based on the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.
KEY ACTORS: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, Keith Carradine, Noah Ringer, Adam Beach, Abigail Spencer, Walter Goggins

RELATED TEXTS:
- The graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.

- Scott Mitchell Rosenberg also had a hand in the Men in Black films, and the post-apocalyptic TV series Jeremiah.
- Sci-fi Westerns: The Valley of Gwangi, Westworld, Back to the Future Part III and Wild Wild West.
- For western sci-fi (as in sci-fi films that ape westerns, as opposed to the other way round) see the TV show Firefly and the first Star Wars film.

The Bigamist

So there's this guy who wants to adopt a kid because he and his wife are having fertility issues, but then the adoption investigator gets all up in his grill and discovers that he has a second family. This is a bit of a no-no these days, but back in the 1950s it was positively scandalous. Harry (Edmond O'Brien), the bigamist in question, seems to think that relating his story will stop his arrest but there's not really anything in his tale that suggests he has 'extenuating' circumstances that would get him out of it. In short: he's a bigamist!

I guess the real point of this film is that it humanises adultery. I don't think anyone in this film is denying that it's a problem, but the fact of the matter is that it happens and Hollywood films in the '30s, '40s and '50s had a hard time putting this on the screen without demonising certain parties. Harry is a cagey travelling salesman, so he's out on the road and away from his wife a lot. He eventually finds love in the arms of another woman, and in a way this helps him combat his loneliness at home. Both women are portrayed as innocents in all this, with neither knowing about the other (at first). It is what it is. It's not exactly a justification for bigamy, but it goes some way towards explaining it. It's pretty sensationalist and hard-hitting stuff for the '50s, and I guess this lends the film a certain film noir-ish tone (especially in the way it's told in flashback).

O'Brien plays Harry with a certain swarthiness that makes him seem suspicious, and it's important to remember that since this was a film made under the Hays Code that this means it could never go too far towards justifying bigamy. Check out this quote from the adoption investigator (played by Edmund Gwenn), it pretty much sums up the censorship-heavy mixed message of the film:

"I'm not a policeman. It's not my duty to do anything but see that the juvenile wards of the state of California are given decent homes. I can't figure out my feelings towards you. I despise you, and I pity you. I don't even want to shake your hand and yet, I almost wish you luck"

He speaks for the audience, who must've also felt some conflicted emotions after investing sympathy in this character despite his moral transgression. In a way it's a commentary on censorship and a commentary on the Hays Code itself. Regarding morality, it shouldn't really be the place of films to censor the truth of things. It should be a matter of personal judgment, and that's what I took away from this interesting and ahead-of-it's-time film.

DIRECTOR: Ida Lupino
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Collier Young, Larry Marcus and Lou Schor.
KEY ACTORS: Edmond O'Brien, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Kenneth Tobey, Jane Darwell

RELATED TEXTS:
For another Hollywood film from this era that tackles adultery, see The Postman Always Rings Twice.
- Actress Ida Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood throughout the '40s and '50s. She addressed a variety of controversial social issues in a series of low budget films: Outrage, The Hitch-Hiker, Never Fear and The Trouble With Angels.
- Films about bigamy: The Constant Husband, Move Over Darling, My Favourite Wife and Eulogy.
- See also the fun HBO series Big Love, which is all about polygamist mormons.

Let Me In

As a big fan of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, I was (like most) a little hesistant to accept an American remake. In light of all the Twilight hysteria over the last five years, any antidote to Stephanie Meyer's tweenification of vampires is welcome, so at the end of the day I guess I'm quite happy for this story to reach new audiences via an English-language remake. Let Me In goes for a similar indie-film vibe as Let the Right One In, which suggests that it is a remake of the Swedish film rather than a new adaptation of the novel. At any rate, Let Me In doesn't compromise for the American audience. There are some significant changes (like the New Mexico setting) but nothing that radically alters the taste of the story.

For anyone who's unaware, this story is based on a revisionist vampire novel by the twisted Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. It's kind of an anti-Twilight, focusing on a lonely 12 year old boy who befriends a vampire girl. The boy, Owen (played here by Kodi Smit-McPhee), is being bullied by some larger kids at his school. Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz), an ungodly vampire, moves into his New Mexico neighbourhood and the two begin learning about each other. It isn't a film for kids, it's quite full-on in parts and the extent of Abby's vampirism is more horrific than a casual viewer might suspect.

Let Me In captures the disturbing nature of bullying quite graphically. A lot of claustrophobic framing is used to rankle to the viewer somewhat, and the film uses these elements to explore taboos surrounding sexuality and puberty (which is actually quite brave for an American film). Part of this is the text's theme of androgyny - the way the bullies refer to Owen as "little girl", and the way Abby's voice becomes deep and man-ish when she's angry. I had an uneasy feeling that a lot of this stuff would've been dropped from the American adaptation, so I was happy to see that it wasn't the case. Another thing struck me while I watched Let Me In; the character of Thomas (Richard Jenkins) is portrayed in a manner that makes one think of pedophilia, but he might not be a pedophile at all - he could've met Abby when he was 12, and has been with her from that age. Just a thought I had, I'm sure others may have come to this conclusion too.

I'm not sure I liked the film's colour palette. It was all orange and shadows, which fits with the desert setting, but I'm just over America's south-west being shot in this way. Aside from the cinematography stuff, it takes a lot of its visual cues from the first film (the first attack, the way some of the deaths are shot and staged, the flaming bed, the pool scene at the end, etc). I'm not sure what kind of impact this film made overall, I'm unsure if it would've actually reached any viewers who wouldn't or didn't watch the original version. The upshot of this fidelity to a well-made film is that it means that Let Me In also happens to be quite well-made as well. If I hadn't seen the original version I might've been knocked out by this film, but as I'd seen it all before I can't say it did much for me. It's almost shot-for-shot like Let the Right One In a lot of the time, so I just felt like it was a bit of a pointless exercise. People who don't like foreign language films though will benefit from the availability of this version, it still makes a nice change from the cutesy shenanigans of the Twilight films.

DIRECTOR: Matt Reeves
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Matt Reeves, based on the script and novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
KEY ACTORS: Chloe Grace Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Dylan Minette

RELATED TEXTS

- The Swedish film Let the Right One In, and the novel it's based on, also called Let the Right One In.
- Matt Reeves previously directed Cloverfield.
- For the other recent take on teenage vampires, see Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2.

Grass For His Pillow

Grass For His Pillow is the second novel in Lian Hearn's popular and acclaimed fantasy/adventure series Tales of the Otori. Focusing on the feudal intrigues of rival clans of samurai warlords in a Japan-like land known only as 'The Three Countries', the series mainly follows two central characters; the conflicted and almost super-human assassin Lord Takeo, and the abused, cursed and strong-willed Lady Kaede - lovers seperated by rigid codes of class and Takeo's own ambiguous loyalties.

This book picks up almost immediately from the end of Across the Nightingale Floor. Takeo has joined with the mysterious and ammoral group known only as The Tribe, and this book does a lot to answer all the questions we might have asked ourselves about them in the first book. Kaede, on the other hand, returns to her homelands to find them in ruin and her half of the book is about her own self-actualisation, her growing thirst for power and her general transformation from naive young girl to responsible adult as she takes up the reigns of her native clan.

A lot more is filled in about the Three Countries themselves and we learn more about the caste system that is mostly only implied in the previous book - we learn exactly how the Tribe fit in around the warring clans, about the outcastes (a kind of peasant class akin to the Untouchable class in Hindu culture), and more about the clans and the changing nature of their relationships with one another and the ongoing evolution of the Three Countries. Nothing is shunned or left out... much realism is added through the inclusion of homosexuality, as well as Hearn's acknowledgement of certain human weaknesses that would normally be overlooked by books about honour codes and the like.

Unfortunately this book isn't too concerned with a story unto itself, it's more about setting up a bigger story for events to come in the third book, The Brilliance of the Moon... the introduction of a prophecy and the colouring of the various religions practiced throughout the Three Countries, as well as the added information about the outcastes and Kaede's changing status and her questioning of feudal sexual politics - these things all point towards the next book and the bigger picture. Takeo's half of the book is interesting in it's expansion of the story but (despite containing the more action-orientated sequences) it didn't engage me the way that Kaede's story did... her rebellion against the traditional role of a female in this kind of society (and story) was far more interesting and motivating, and it made for quicker reading whenever her parts came up (the opposite was the case for me in the first book, where Takeo's story was the more interesting of the two!)

So I can't really reccomend this book on it's own to anyone, it isn't stand-alone but if you liked the first book, Across the Nightingale Floor, then you'll eat this one up too. This series looks to be the sort that you have to read in it's entireity though. What can I say? Sometimes the best series are of that nature.

The Hunger Games

It's being hyped as the next Twilight, which is pretty disingenuous because it's not like Twilight at all, but I can understand it from a marketing standpoint. The only thing the two films have in common is the idea of a love triangle, but whereas Twilight makes this it's main plot, The Hunger Games uses it in the way that a salad uses salad dressing. I recently read Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games novels a few months back in anticipation of the popularity explosion, but I couldn't have possibly guessed how big this was all going to be. I'll just say straight off the bat that this is a fantastic movie, and that you don't need to have read the books, blah blah blah, just go see it.

Anyway, the basic premise should be pretty familiar to anyone who has seen Battle Royale, The Running Man, Turkey Shoot, that episode of Buffy, etc, etc. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 16 year old girl in the future-nation of Panem (some 100-120 years from now). She lives in a poor mining district that pretty much does slave work for a decadent Rome-like capital city. Along with eleven other districts, her district must offer up two 'tributes' every year to battle it out to death on national television. Katniss finds herself competing in these vicious games when she volunteers to take the place of her younger sister.

To fixate on the teens-battling-each-other aspect and inevitable comparisons to Battle Royale is to ignore the fact that this story (and the novels) aren't just about this - it's about the larger world of Panem and ideas relating to reality TV and modern society, and a good half of the film (arguably the better half) isn't about the games at all. Some of the drama was lost for me when they went into the arena, the film kind of stalls a bit because we pretty much know what to expect from this point on. I love how they did a whole 1930s dustbowl/futuristic art deco thing with Panem, it gave the film an original look (and it fits with the casting of Jennifer Lawrence, calling to mind her brilliant break-out role in Winter's Bone... though this is most likely entirely coincidental).

I found the shaky cam stuff a little irritating at first but I stopped noticing it after the first five or ten minutes because everything about The Hunger Games is so incredibly engaging. The characters are all so perfectly cast, and Katniss is such a strong heroine. She never falls into the trap of annoying whininess, and Lawrence is such an all-round great actress that she simply is Katniss Everdeen for me (as opposed to one actress' interpretation of the character). I suspect the shaky cam stuff was mainly used just to cover up a lot of the violence... it always seemed to be at its most shaky in the most violent sequences (the riot, the start of the games, etc), and I think this sort of in-film censoring is far better than cutting out the violence altogether.

My only real criticism is that I thought Woody Harrelson should've been a bit gruffer as the mento-character Haymitch. He seemed to be going for a slightly fey vibe, which I guess fits with the fashion of Panem's futuristic denizens, but it just didn't work for me. It's a small criticism, but I just felt a bit disappointed because Harrelson would've nailed it if he wasn't too concerned with broadening his range. Donald Sutherland isn't how I pictured President Snow in my head, but he still fit the role rather well - combining stately dignity and cold menace rather effortlessly. The other main standout in the cast is Josh Hutcherson as the honest-faced Peeta Mellark... Hutcherson has been doing great but mostly unrecognised work in a variety of films throughout his teen years (Bridge to Terabithia, Zathura, Cirque du Freak) and it's nice to know that he's probably about to achieve superstardom.

Anyway, as I said at the start of this review, I thought this film was fantastic. It's very faithful to the book, but also completely faithful to the medium of film (I'm glad they broke free from having it all from Katniss' perspective). Most importantly the script, director and actors all capture the bravery of the novel. Despite knowing what was going to happen I really got swept up in a few of the 'bigger' moments, and I think nailing the 'feel' of a text like this is what truly makes this film a winning adaptation. I think this might just be the best of all the film adaptations of teen novels from over the last ten years or more. It's certainly better than the first couple of Harry Potter films. It's a perfect film version of a great book, and it also happens to be an artistically accomplished film in its own right as well. Go see it!

DIRECTOR: Gary Ross
WRITER/SOURCE: Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray. Based on the novel by Suzanne Collins.
KEY ACTORS: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Liam Hemsworth, Donald Sutherland, Wes Bentley, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, Alexander Ludwig, Isabelle Fuhrman.

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Hunger Games, and it's sequels Catching Fire and Mockingjay, all by Suzanne Collins.
- The idea of humans hunting each other originates in the 1920s short story The Most Dangerous Game.
- Other films that have used this idea include: Turkey Shoot, The Running Man, Battle Royale, Series 7: The Contenders and The Condemned.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Let me be about the gazillionth person to add their voice to the chorus declaiming this film as a serious Oscar contender. It isn't as bad as all that, I'm actually a big fan of the book and the film does a nice enough job of translating it to the screen... but, in it's all-too-obvious contention for Oscar glory, the quirkiness and inventiveness of the novel becomes schmaltz and unwelcome earnestness. All the humour is lost. It's not a bad film but yes, I have to agree, it didn't deserve to be nominated for Oscars. Max Von Sydow swindled Albert Brooks' Best Supporting Oscar nomination spot.

The kid in this film (Thomas Horn) isn't an actor but he still comes across as remarbly natural and avoids overt precociousness. Precociousness is actually one of the character's most indelible traits in the book but it wouldn't translate favourably to the film, so I'm glad the filmmakers realised this and toned it down. Unfortunately, the film is all about this kid (despite the fact that the book focuses equally on the character of 'The Renter'). I'm not one of those people who demands that film versions of books should always be faithful to the source material. I prefer to look at these things on a case-by-case basis, and in the case of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close it feels like a mistake to cut out all the colour and subplots from the novel. It feels too much like the director and writer wanted a story that was solely about 9/11, rather than a story that was about significantly more than this.

The book that this film is based on actually dealt with ideas relating to 9/11 in a subtle and unique way. It doesn't even really become apparent that this is what the book is about until quite far into it. By comparison, this film starts with Tom Hanks falling from the twin towers and then shows us his funeral. It's so obviously manipulative. And goddamit, the movie still made me cry. In a way it's hilariously irresponsible for this book/film to suggest that a kid can wander around New York making friends with every stranger and not get robbed, bashed, murdered or raped (even with certain revelations that shed light on his journey later on) and this is definitely something a pre-9/11 film would never have suggested. But now New York has this spirit of unity, so somehow nothing bad happens there anymore.

It's easy to be cynical about this film (as evidenced by my review so far) but I'm trying (and failing) to resist this urge because it's still quite a well-made film and I know there are plenty of people out there who would enjoy it. Despite my misgivings, and how much I hate being manipulated by this sort of thing, I still got some enjoyment out of it. I can't really fault the poor reception this movie got, but it sucks that so many people hate it because the source material is absolutely fantastic and not at all the manipulative Oscar-bait that the film is. In an alternative universe, the film might've been done better and put more people onto the book.

Oh, and Tom Hanks is about as Jewish as a pork knuckle.

DIRECTOR: Stephen Daldry
WRITER/SOURCE: Eric Roth, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.
KEY ACTORS: Thomas Horn, Max Von Sydow, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Caldwall, Hazelle Goodman

RELATED TEXTS
- The novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, who also wrote the novel Everything is Illuminated.
- Other films about 9/11: World Trade Center, United 93, Flight 93, Rebirth and Reign Over Me.
- Stephen Daldry's best film is Billy Elliot. Daldry also chased Oscar glory with The Reader and The Hours.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Film and Best Supporting Actor (Max Von Sydow)

Black Narcissus

"I think there are only two ways of living in this place. Either you must live like Mr. Dean, or like the Holy Man... either ignore it or give yourself up to it".

I'm so stunned by this film that I really don't know where to start. I'm not sure what I was expecting... maybe something like a historical drama, but I guess in hindsight it's more of a psychological horror movie. Black Narcissus is essentially about a place and a feeling, and more specifically it looks at the breakdown of a convent of nuns assigned to a remote valley in the Himilayas. The British powerhouse of Powell and Pressburger adapted what must've been a fairly complex novel into this beautifully staged and multilayered film - tackling ideas relating to faith, colonialism and memory.

Deborah Kerr leads the cast as a young nun promoted to Sister Superior. She's given four fellow sisters to take to a new convent in a secluded part of the world, and told to make the most of it. The fact that this convent was previously a monastary inhabited by monks and that these said monks only managed to stay there for five months foreshadows the troubles the nuns will face, and Kerr's nun almost immediately comes to loggerheads with Mr. Dean (David Farrar), the local British agent. Things also become complicated further when one of the sisters, Ruth (Kathleen Byron), begins to exhibit some rather strange behaviour.

We're told right from the outset that Sister Ruth is 'ill' and suffers from issues relating to faith. At first she just seems like one of those 'difficult' people, but then we also start to get an insight into the background of Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr's nun) and the film starts delving more deeply into madness, repressed sexuality and all the psychological baggage one might associate with nuns. The beautiful colour location-shooting of the mountain monastary is breathtaking, but the colour cinematography also allows for the shocking image of a nun's blood-splattered habit. This gives way to a sudden genre shift into horror territory, that stunning third act where it suddenly boils over and we unexpectedly see Ruth out of her nun's clothes - defiantly sexualised as she applies red lipstick (foreshadowed by the blood on her habit). It could almost be a slasher film, or something like Event Horizon, as Clodagh faces off against a murderously insane Ruth on the isolated mountain top. We don't really know what Ruth is capable of, especially when we get an extreme closeup on her evil, vacant stare.

When the film gets to this rather left-field place it's a culmination of a lot of tension escalated by various subplots that all explore the same themes. Mr. Dean isn't welcoming to the nuns when they arrive, he's assimilated with the locals to some degree and he resents the convent's attempts to preach and educate. The battle of wills between himself and Clodagh is representative of something much larger, in any other film it might be sexual tension (and there's certainly an element of this at play) but here it's also a dialogue between different notions of civilisation. Dean has turned his back on European ideals in order to live sanely in a supposedly forsaken and otherworldly place. This valley has a strange atmosphere that has a disconnecting effect on Westerners. For the nuns it makes them remember the pre-service lives they tried so hard to forget... it's certainly not a place for religious people who need to live with a purpose. Ultimately though, the valley is symbolic - it is a place where imperialism can't and won't triumph, and Black Narcissus uses this conceit to deconstruct western superiority in all it's forms (be it religion, education, sexual repression, or colonialism).

The anti-colonialist subtext should be clear almost straight away, Mr. Dean's letter at the film's beginning states that "The men are men, the women women, and the children are children", asserting that people are inherently the same despite their ethnographic and cultural differences. This, of course, flies in the face of ides inherent in colonialism and the missionary work of nuns. The hypocrisy of Christianity as a by-product (or perhaps 'by-force' would be a better term) of colonialism is never said outright, but it's definitely there in the film. This valley is a place in the world that just can't be colonised, which is quite a subversive idea as it sugggests that Christianity doesn't apply everywhere.

The 'Black Narcissus' of the title is actually a perfume from England. The scent of this perfume is cited as the catalyst for the changes experienced by Clodagh and Ruth... the power of smell has long been associated with memory, and here it triggers things that have been repressed. As nuns are the ultimate in repression, this naturally drives them crazy. This is a powerful and intelligent film, wonderfully acted, surprisingly subversive, and altogether unique. A must-see, and one of the pillarstones of British filmmaking.

DIRECTOR: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

WRITER/SOURCE: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on a novel by Rumer Godden.
KEY ACTORS: Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson, Jean Simmons, David Farrar, Sabu, Kathleen Byron, Esmond Knight, Jenny Laird, Judith Furse

RELATED TEXTS

- Black Narcissus, a 1939 novel written by Rumer Godden.
- Deborah Kerr would play a nun again in Heaven Knows Mr. Allison.
- Other films about nuns: The Nun's Story, The Song of Bernadette, The Bells' of St. Mary's and Agnes of God.
- Powell and Pressburger's other big films were: The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I'm Going!, Peeping Tom and The Battle of the River Plate.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.
Golden Globes - won Best Cinematography.

Across the Nightingale Floor

Across the Nightingale Floor is the first book in a trilogy known as Tales of the Otori, an historical/fantasy series set in a land based on feudal Japan. They are written by an Australian author, "Lian Hearn" (more about the author at the bottom of this review), and have become tremendously popular since their release not so long ago. So much so that two follow up books eventually followed in their wake (making the trilogy a series of five).

Most of the book's events take place from the point of view of Takeo, an orphan fugutive who was one of the Hidden - a pacifist religious minority who are persecuted by Lord Iida, Warlord of the Tohan clan. The Tohan clan rule the majority of the Three Countries through a cruel and careless kind of tyranny. Takeo is rescued by Lord Otori, who sees in Takeo some unique talents and subsequently adopts him into the Otori clan.

The other parts of the book are told from the point of view of Kaede, a 15 year old Lady who is being used as a bargaining tool by the Tohan and their allies to lure Lord Otori into a trap. She is said to be cursed, for any man who dares touch her meets a bloody death. She is distraught by the situation and reputation she has been forced into.

Much of what follows between the various warring clans of the Three Countries is twisted and complicated, and it took me the best part of the book to figure out the full rammifications of what was happening. Thankfully, Hearn writes in a simplistic and graceful manner that ensures the book never loses you... sometimes I thought the writing was a little too simple, but then Hearn would unveil a beautifully descriptive passage that transports you completely to this other time, and I think the style is entirely suitable to the subject matter.

The manners and customs of the clans are uniquely Japanese and the author never once slips up in her depiction of the way these people relate to each other and the strict ways of life to which they are bound. It makes for fascinating reading, sometimes the choices these characters make are very different to what a western reader like myself would expect, and Hearn does an excellent job of making it seem nothing less than realistic.

By around the halfway mark, I simply couldn't put this book down. I was rip-roaring to get stuck into the next two novels, Grass for His Pillow and Brilliance of the Moon. "Lian Hearn" is actually a pseudonym for popular children's author Gillian Rubenstein (previously best known for the 80s arcade game-inspired Space Demons). The follow up novels are titled The Harsh Cry of the Heron and Heaven's Net is Wide.

The Way Back

"Nature is your jailor, and she has no mercy"

This Peter Weir film flew under the radar a bit. I know I tend to use this phrase a lot, but this film really seemed to make no impact anywhere. Perhaps this is because it covers a fairly obscure piece of history, doesn't really have any star power, and doesn't tell a straightforward story of good guys and bad guys. The bottom line is that this is an amazing true tale of survival that's been bankrolled by National Geographic (this in itself should give you a good idea of the subject matter). Peter Weir's longstanding reverence for atmospheric storytelling makes this story the perfect foil for his directorial idiosyncracies, and I highly recommend this film as a more realistic kind of adventure film for people who are sick of exploding cars and unrealistically 'heroic' characters.

The starting point for this film is a WWII-era Soviet concentration camp for political criminals. This brutal gulag is internally run by regular criminals (petty thieves, rapists and murderers... represented in this film by a very entertaining Colin Farrell). The camp has minimal security because the Siberian wilderness that surrounds it as practically impossible to traverse. And yet, a small group of political dissidents (including Ed Harris as a quietly tough-as-nails American) decide to try and make a break for it. The journey they face as they try to escape the world's largest country (on foot) is one of incredible scope and hardship.

I couldn't help but keep thinking: are these guys going to eat each other? I won't reveal the answer to that question but I will say that we know from the start that only three out of seven escapees will complete their epic journey across wilderness, desert and ice. There's no sugarcoating in this tale, but it isn't exactly exploitative either. It's just a bare kind of truth... the film does take an anti-communist stance of sorts but it doesn't feel like propaganda, this is just an amazing story that happened, it doesn't really have an agenda. It's more about courage and freedom than it is about injustice. By the time you get to the end you'll feel like you've almost literally taken this journey with the characters, it's a powerful finish and one that the viewer earns and deserves.

DIRECTOR: Peter Weir
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Keith Clark and Peter Weir, loosely based on real events.
KEY ACTORS: Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Gustaf Skarsgard, Mark Strong.

RELATED TEXTS
- The film is based on The Long Walk, a memoir by Slawomir Rawicz of his escape from a Siberian gulag. Rawicz's account has been discredited by others who claimed the story really happened to them instead. Nonetheless, the events did apparently take place, and a further book was written about verifying the story - Looking for Mr Smith: The Quest for the Truth Behind the Long Walk.
- Other films about survival in trying environments: Island in the Sky, Cast Away, Alive!, Into the Wild, Deliverance, Rescue Dawn, Van Diemen's Land and The Grey.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Makeup.

Crossfire

"Soldiers don't have anywhere to go unless you tell 'em where to go. When they're off duty they go crawling, or they go crazy"

This quote is one of many memorably worded exchanges that sum up the heavy subtext of Crossfire; the idea that the soldier recently returned from war will become dangerous now that his purpose has been taken away. This film noir starts with a murderous brawl in a darkened apartment, a transgressive act that puts the 'displaced soldier' outside of social norms right from the outset. The film goes for a mystery angle (as opposed to the usual 'desperate anti-hero' trope that a lot of film noirs build off), and the audience investigates this obscured murder alongside a police detective (Robert Young) as he wades into a purgatory-like world of G.I.s who have just undergone demobilisation after WWII.

Crossfire holds the distinction of being the first 'B-movie' to get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It didn't win, but watching the film you can see how it uses its B-movie status to really sink its teeth into some controversial topics... a bigger film from this era wouldn't dare take such a blase attitude. The film noir genre was built around an exploration of morality that often clashed with what wasn't allowed on the screen in America (as determined by the Hays Code)... these were low budget films that snuck certain messages under the radar whilst playing by the rules in a very clever manner. For instance, the character of Ginny (Gloria Grahame) is clearly a prostitute, but the script gets around this by stating things ambiguously. When she's asked repeatedly what her job is, she evenly replies "I work for a living". Furthermore, the film's more outright condemnation of anti-semitism starts out by lightly alluding to "Guys with funny names".

"He couldn't kill anybody"
"Could you?"
"I have"
"Where?"
"Where you get medals for it"

So when you get a society with a heightened code of ethics, like America in the '40s, it's only natural that a few double-standards would begin to emerge after WWII. Thousands of American soldiers have just been sent overseas and asked to kill for their country, yet how does this square with the idea of murder back in the U.S.? Plus there's the added question of what happens to all these guys now that the war is over. We have cynical intellectuals like Keeley (Robert Mitchum), seemingly burnt out after the hypocrisy of their war experiences, and then we have more dangerous types like Montgomery (Robert Ryan, in a memorably Lee Marvinesque big-mouth role).

"Ignorant men always laugh at things that are different, things they don't understand. They're afraid of things they don't understand, they end up hating them."

The source material for Crossfire actually used homophobia as the subtext, but due to the ongoing influence of the Hays Code this was changed to anti-semitism. I guess bending the Code could only go so far, but it would be interesting to see a '40s film noir along these lines that tackled homosexuality (not that such a thing neccessarily exists). The anti-semitism isn't explored too deeply but it does offer an interesting shade to the story's climax, and Crossfire stands out overall as a densely plotted film noir (with all the requisite twists and red herrings) that combines all the sleaziness of a '40s B-movie with the big emerging social issues of the time. Watch it also for a great supporting performance from Robert Ryan.

DIRECTOR: Edward Dmytryk
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by John Paxton, based on a novel by Richard Brooks.
KEY ACTORS: Robert Mitchum, Robert Young, Robery Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Paul Kelly, Sam Levene

RELATED TEXTS:
- The 1945 novel The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks.
- Other films about anti-semitism: Gentleman's Agreement, School Ties, Focus and The Believer.
- The idea of the displaced returned soldier was also explored in The Best Years of Our Lives, Jacknife, Coming Home, The Men and The Deer Hunter.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Robert Ryan), Best Supporting Actress (Gloria Grahame) and Best Writing.
BAFTAs - nominated for Best Film.
Cannes Film Festival - won Best Social Film.

A Better Life

"Why do all these poor people have kids, what's the point?"

A Better Life crept onto many people's radars (myself included) due to the unexpected Oscar-nominated performance of Demian Bichir. The film isn't the big, fanfare-attracting kind of film that usually gets that kind of attention, but it's a subtle burner that looks at the Mexican-American immigrant story with unwavering empathy and has a ring of authenticity about it. It's basically about a single man (Carlos, an illegal immigrant) and his son trying to get by in America. It's a hard situation because Carlos has to work constantly just for them to stay alive, which means he's largely absent from his son's life.

This is the American immigrant story told in personal but resonating terms. The hardworking first generation begets a criminal second generation, kids who are lazy and fed off the spoils of their despondent fathers... kids like Luis (Jose Julian) who don't have the same identity due to having been brought up in America instead of Mexico. There's a loss of culture happening with these kids, and since they don't fit with mainstream American culture this gets replaced with a gang mentality. The film examines this problem with unflinching honesty; this second generation is educated not by their elders but by their peers.

In A Better Life we see two worlds of hispanics in L.A. that exist side by side - the modern gangs that feed off crime, and the illegal immigrants trying to carve a better life through industry. It's a complex and heartbreaking paradox that all the hard work of the first generation gives way to such anti-social behaviour in their children, and I think this film goes some way towards bridging the discrepencies between these two worlds. It's full of damningly concise moments that juxtapose the different lifestyles of the two generations - cutting from Carlos sharing his food with another jobless man as they both wait on the street for work to a scene that depicts heavily tattooed teenagers leaning on cars blaring with hip hop music. It's obvious stuff, but it feels real here because everything else about the film is so understated yet earnest.

It really is quite a heartbreaking story... Carlos is so proud when he finally gets a truck of his own and his son is all like "Good for you" and Carlos corrects him by saying, "Good for us". He refers to the truck as "our truck" but to the kid it's nothing. He has no concept of what his father does for him, and at some level Carlos knows this. Demian Bichir definitely deserved his Oscar nomination for the role of Carlos, the pain he goes through is all under the surface. He's a real life hero, an honest man in a hard world trying to teach his son true manhood. He's Atticus Finch as a Mexican gardener. Watch this film for a great piece of restrained acting and for some insight into the world of illegal immigrants - this is their story, and it captures the simple, desperate and heartfelt honesty of their situations.

DIRECTOR: Chris Weitz
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Eric Eason, with story input from Roger L. Simon.
KEY ACTORS: Demian Bichir, Jose Julian, Eddie 'Piolon' Sotelo, Nancy Lenehan, Joaquin Cosio

RELATED TEXTS
- Films about people traveling to America to make a better life for themselves: The Visitor, Stroszek and Maria Full of Grace.
- Carlos' journey with his son echoes that of the father and son in Bicycle Thieves.
- Films about gangs in L.A. - Colors, Training Day, 187, Boyz N The Hood, Stand and Deliver, The Freedom Writers, Fresh and City of God.
- Director Chris Weitz also touched on themes of fatherhood and growing up with American Pie and About a Boy.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Actor (Demian Bichir).
Independent Spirit Awards - nominated for Best Actor (Bichir)

X-Men: First Class

After X-Men: The Last Stand and the Wolverine movie I guess I could be forgiven for thinking the franchise was very firmly at the bottom of the rubbish bin. Having enjoyed Bryan Singer's excellent work with the first two X-Men films, I thought it was a damn shame to see the potential of the series squandered so recklessly (and I know I'm not alone on this one). But, in the crazy topsy-turvy world of Hollywood these days, it seems that extreme sequelisation is no longer an indicator of poor quality... X-Men: First Class is the fifth big screen X-Men adventure and it comes admirably close to being the best film in the franchise.

The masterstroke with this film is that it's a balls out superhero origin story crossed with a '60s period adventure. It plays out against a Cold War backdrop, with a villain named Shaw (Kevin Bacon, the guy gets everywhere) trying to force nuclear armageddon during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. It adds some extra oomph and fun to the standard comic book stuff to see it all tied in with real historical events like this, and the script makes use of the era to move beyond simple gimmickry and examine some more current concerns by paralleling the communist scare of the '60s with our current post-9/11 mindset. When we have homeland security classifying mutants as 'not human' and therefore not having human rights, it calls to mind recent issues regarding 'terrorism'-related arrests.

Also, we have familiar characters like Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy). I don't think anyone expects anything particularly original to be said about these guys, but this film still manages to redefine the characters somewhat in their youth. Magneto and Xavier are very much the stars of this film, and a lot of the film is spent on the contrast between Magneto's power being unlocked by anger and pain and Xavier's power being unlocked by kindness. I was highly amused by the idea of Xavier using his theorisations to pick up chicks in the '60s (he's a lover not a fighter), but I wish they'd done a bit more with this throughout the film rather than just using this joke as a way to introduce the younger version of the character.

This entry in the series also gets back to what made the first film so successful, being an emphasis on characterisation. The idea of X-Men in the '60s on its own is a pretty good selling point, but exploring Magneto's drive for revenge against the Nazis is also a pretty appealing proposition just on its own. I mentioned earlier that there were parallels with 9/11 and the Cold War; well the other major parallel is Magneto's status as a Jew vs. his status as a mutant. His revenge against the Nazis eventually turns into revenge against all humans, and I think director Matthew Vaughn does a good job of illustrating these motivations in clear and easily understood terms. The emotions that make certain mutants into 'villains' - resent, bitterness, anger - they're all emotions born out of discrimination and prejudice. This film is a real winner because it doesn't forget that this is an important subtext to the overall X-Men story.

DIRECTOR: Matthew Vaughn
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Ashley Miller, Jack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Bryan Singer and Sheldon Turner. Based on the comic series and characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
KEY ACTORS: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Platt, Ray Wise, Zoe Kravitz, Jason Flemyng, Michael Ironside, James Remar

RELATED TEXTS
- The four previous X-Men films were: X-Men, X-Men 2, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
- Matthew Vaughn previously threw himself into the world of superheroes with Kick-Ass. Before that he also directed the films Stardust and Layer Cake.

Oops!

Apologies with the lack of a review today and slowness of some posts this month, I'm having issues with my computer. It should be fixed this afternoon.

Keep on truckin!

Ninotchka

"I do not deny its beauty, but it's a waste of electricity"

Ninotchka is a fish out of water comedy that gently mocks Russian seriousness and western flippancy in equal spades, but it's probably most well remembered for being the film where 'Garbo laughs'. It wasn't the first time the stoic Swedish actress was shown to be happy, but it does have some uniqueness in putting the actress firmly outside of her dramatic comfort zone. This is Garbo doing comedy, and the marketing materials for this film back in the late '30s made a big deal out of the fact that she was branching out of her serious screen persona.

The film starts out with some Soviet agents travelling to France with noble intentions of selling some precious jewels to feed the Russian people (which puts the viewer on their side, despite their 'oddness'). There's a Duchess in Paris who lays claims to these jewels and is making every effort to swindle them away from the Soviets. She's shown to be quite horrid, typical of the tyrannical aristocracy of old Europe, which further lays the viewer's sympathy with the Russians. It seems very strange for a Western-made film to paint the Soviets in such a pitiable light, especially when Ninotchka speaks of the Duchess' corruption with this quote; "You are something we do not have in Russia. That is why I believe in the future of my country". The film plays out a smart comedy of clashing cultures, and then throws a curveball by introducing a romance element and further deconstruction socialism and capitalism alike. It leaves this viewer unsure of where to stand, making the film uniquely and objectively political for a screwball comedy.

"They cannot censor our memories, can they?"

Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) is efficient and emotionless. She's the indomitable Russian conquered by love, a staunch anti-capitalist who comes to decadent pre-war France on a secret mission to bring home some wayward Soviets and save her home country. The eternally serious Garbo lets her hair down, and does it in the context of a serious character also letting their hair down, and this is a big part of the film's success. Her flat monotone delivery is occasionally grating but the script is great, and she's a delight when Melvyn Douglas is repeatedly trying to make her laugh... he tells joke after joke and she's all like, "you're not funny". It becomes less funny later on when she's happy (and less at odds with the easygoing Parisians) though I guess this character development is kind of crucial to the plot.

"We have the high ideals, but they have the climate"

Melvyn Douglas plays a dapper David Niven type who falls in love with Ninotchka. The interplay between himself and Garbo is surprisingly adult, and I did seriously LOL at the communist humour. The Russian-set scenes are a real spectacle, knowingly laden with socialist propaganda and some cutting satire, but most of the laughs come in the film's earlier scenes where the Soviets run amok in glittering pre-war Paris. In a way, the film is a time capsule, having been made in the late '30s it's a film that captures France before the country's ruination of the Germans during WWII. Also, never again would an aristocrats vs. bolsheviks comedy be possible in quite the same tone. The idea of socialists being corrupted by the decadent West, and a decadent westerner also being corrupted by socialist idealism, just isn't something that would have ever made it to the screen during the Cold War... it makes this cheeky film something really special.

DIRECTOR: Ernst Lubitsch
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Melchior Lengyel, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch.
KEY ACTORS: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Ina Claire, Sig Ruman

RELATED TEXTS
- Some similar classic films that riff on World Wars and east-meets-west scenarios: Comrade X, A Foreign Affair and One Two Three.
- Lubitsch's other big films are: The Shop Around the Corner, The Love Parade, Heaven Can Wait, To Be Or Not to Be and Trouble in Paradise.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Film, Best Actress (Greta Garbo), Best Original Writing and Best Screenplay.

J. Edgar

"Edgar, can you keep a secret?"

I can't say I've had much of a fascination for J. Edgar Hoover, he always came across to me as a bit of paranoid arsehole. I'm not saying you can't make a great film out of that, but, eh, I just find myself caring less and less as these various miniscule pieces of recent American history get brought to the screen. Clint Eastwood's latest last-ditch grab for Oscar glory sees him team up with Leonardo DiCaprio for a 20th Century period biopic that calls to mind Eastwood's other recent film Changeling. You're interest in this film will probably vary depending on how interested you are in the subject matter. For those not in the know, Hoover was a pioneering bureaucrat who pretty much invented the FBI as we know it. He became notorious for accumulating power via the magic of blackmail, and infamous for the fact that he was allegedly a bit of a cross dresser.

Hoover was a man who traded in information. He amassed it and found new ways to catalogue it in an accessible fashion, and ultimately used this for power. As bad as that sounds he was also responsible for innovative new techniques in fighting crime, and the creation of the modern FBI and its methods. He was a man who valued loyalty whilst contradictorily using state secrets to blackmail his peers, and Eastwood, DiCaprio and writer Dustin Lance Black all try to get to the bottom of this flaw as authentically as possible - creating a fairly believable portrait of a fanatic. Eastwood has (as usual) made a pretty solid film. DiCaprio is actually really good as J. Edgar... he gives a similar kind of performance to the one he gave in The Aviator, tapping into paranoia and insecurity to bring a distant and secretive historical figure to life. In this case he also modifies his voice somewhat, capturing Hoover's peculiar way of speaking.

I'm probably just being overly cynical here but Eastwood does seem to be chasing critical glory by trying to combine his own interests (right wing politics and American history) and touchy modern issues (homosexuality) by creating a 'Brokeback G-Men' kind of tale. I'm glad they made mention of the fact that Hoover was a cross dresser... I know it's not entirely relevant to his career, but it's an interesting and unexpected facet of his personality and I would've felt cheated that a biopic about him would ignore it altogether. His hidden homosexuality is dealt with, but it's all very tame and the view taken is that Hoover repressed it completely (which contradicts various historical accounts). Some of it is inadvertantly camp in it's complete seriousness, especially when Hoover admits to his male companion that he 'needed' him. It feels very much like Eastwood chasing awards by marrying 'edgy' gay material with a big budget biopic about America and democracy.

At the end of the day, despite it's pretensions, it's an enjoyable enough by-the-numbers biopic. We get the 'destined for greatness' speech, flashbacks at crucial moments, an elderly Hoover framing device (argh, why must all biopics do this now?), and a terrorism subtext that makes it relevant for modern audiences.It fizzles a bit towards the end when it focuses more on Hoover's descent into villainy, and cuts across two different time frames a little too much, but overall it's acceptable in a meat and potatoes sort of way. Who knew that Hollywood, whose greatest enemy was once Hoover, would eventually produce a fairly balanced and sympathetic biopic about the man?

LOWPOINT: Various famous American politicians appear, and all I'll say is... Worst. Nixon. Ever.

DIRECTOR: Clint Eastwood
WRITER/SOURCE: Dustin Lance Black
KEY ACTORS: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Donovan, Lea Thompson

RELATED TEXTS
- Eastwood's other recent crime period piece was Changeling.

- Other movies featuring or about Hoover... The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Chaplin, Nixon, Public Enemies and Panther.
- For a history of the other big American investigative organisation (the CIA) see The Good Shepherd.
- J. Edgar features and makes reference to the gangster classic The Public Enemy.

AWARDS
AFIs - nominated for Best International Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Golden Globes - nominated for Best Actor - Drama (DiCaprio)

Men Behaving Badly

Men Behaving Badly was a comedy series that was voted as one of the best sitcoms of all time in Britain, and it ran for about six seasons (seven if you count the final special episodes). It was shown in Australia as well, and also had a bad American version made of it (starring Rob Schneider). I'm a huge fan of this show. Basically, it's about Gary - a real arsehole and generally pathetic man who manages a small security firm in Croyden by day, and becomes a 'drunken lord of misrule' by night' (when he isn't breaking up with his long-suffering girlfriend Dorothy). For most of the shows' six or seven seasons he is joined by Tony - a somewhat more jolly character, though equally as badly behaved. Anyways, this show actually had its start as a novel.

Men Behaving Badly the book was written and published in the early-to-mid 80s by Simon Nye. It was Nye's first novel and it enjoyed only moderate success. A few years later the book's characters and plot would be restructured and launched as the highly popular television series. For a huge fan like me, I found it highly neccessary to find and read the book.

Firstly, I think this book is pretty much out of print at the moment. It was re-printed in the mid-90s when Men Behaving Badly was at the height of it's success, but for the moment it's probably most easily found on Amazon, eBay or your nearest second hand bookstore. It's a fairly slight book, very funny in parts and full of all sorts of smart-arsery, but not without a hint of the tragic about it.

Gary is a bearded loser who runs a stall (much like Tony's stall in the second series of the television show), but aside from this description he is pretty much the same boorish character he is in the show. His flatmate is Dermot, who comes across better in the book than he did in the first series of the show. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that it's Dermot who is the more interesting character in the novel. Dorothy is a somewhat minor character in the book (much in the same way as she was in the show's first series) and Deborah forms the crux of the novel's plot. It basically follows Gary and Dermot competing for Deborah's aloof affections, and some strands of this story would later be used to form the plots for some of the first season's episodes. There isn't exactly much substance in the overall plot but it's the book's characters and the comedy that drives it.

So if you're a fan of the series or are just looking for a light and funny read, you could do worse than picking up this book if you happen to see it somewhere.

Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story" (Chopper Read... sorry, I mean Ian Drury)

I went into this knowing next to nothing about Ian Dury. I knew he was a British punk, and I had an inkling that he wanted someone to hit him with their rhythm stick, but that was it. There are times when I was watching this biopic and I thought, yeah, this guy is awesome, how come I never knew about him before now? But there were also times where I cringed, and this is because the film feels very much like a flash-animated TV movie. I can get down with this to some degree, punk is supposed to be DIY (and a big part of Dury's life-adventure was about self-sufficiency), but the direction did grate on my nerves a little bit. A lot of Dury's tale is told in flashhback from within the context of one of his performances, he narrates his life like it's a TV special. When it comes to biopics about interesting people, I just want to get to the story, dammit. I'm not interested in the director's skill as a whizz-bang director, I'm not interested in how clever the script can be... I'm just interested in hearing about Ian Dury and what he did and why he did it.

If, like me, you aren't overly familiar with Dury, here's a brief summation of who he was... Dury was a working class Brit crippled by polio, and I guess he happened to be in the right place at the right time when the punk movement took off in the late '70s. He became a singer for his own band, The Blockheads, and was renowned as a controversial one-of-a-kind performer. He also became an unofficial spokesperson and advocate for the inclusion of people with disabilities in mainstream society, a role that he felt was a double-edged sword (and something that led him into a lot of trouble). The first part of the film looks at his childhood and his early years, and then the second part shows him getting the fame he sought for so long and how he deals with the fawning attention of the masses.

This is British punk in all it's lairy, gaudy, cut 'n' paste theatrics. Despite later subcultural movements in the '80s and beyond, this version of punk was all about spectacle, image and attitude. Dury exemplifies this whilst also demonstrating the punk genre's place as a forum that gives voice to the marginalised. Some parts of the film use stop-motion styled editing to emulate the look of '70s and '80s music videos, but beyond these more superficial touches this is also a film of contrasts - Dury and his dad vs. Dury and his son, or even a shot of Dury drunkenly falling into a pool vs. Dury falling into a crowd at a show. It's a dense and informative work that talks as much about Ian Dury as it does about the role of punk music, but it's a shame that it couldn't cut to the chase a bit more rather than getting hung up on being 'clever' and flashy.

Anyway, despite the film's occasional tonal flaws and the continuing overcomplication of biopic films in general, this is a charismatic, brawling, chaotic and self-absorbed tale about a charismatic, brawling, chaotic and self-absorbed individual. Watch it if only for the recreation of Dury's infamous U.N. sanctioned song for the disabled, "Spasticus Autisticus". What a legend.

DIRECTOR: Mat Whitecross
WRITER/SOURCE: Paul Viragh (based on the life of Ian Dury)
KEY ACTORS: Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Ray Winstone, Olivia Williams, Noel Clarke, Toby Jones, Ralph Ineson, Arthur Davill, Mackenzie Crook, Bill Milner,

RELATED TEXTS:
- Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, an authorised biography of Ian Dury by Richard Balls.
- Other British music biopics: Control, Stoned, 24 Hour Party People, Backbeat and Sid and Nancy.

AWARDS
BAFTAs - nominated Best Actor (Andy Serkis) and Best Music.

John Wayne - The Man Behind the Myth

I love John Wayne. It's not a sexual love, and it's not an ironic love like Rik's fannery of Cliff Richard in The Young Ones. This is a genuine appreciation of a screen giant and his unique talent and just how damn iconic he was. When I think Superstars (yes, with a capital S) I think... Steve McQueen, John Wayne and Tom Cruise. These people are known everywhere in the world and will be remembered for some time after they went. We might not get a mythical icon like Wayne again... Cruise has damaged his name too much with his offscreen weirdness, and the media is too quick to latch onto anything that damages the image of a star these days. Wayne is an icon from a dying era.

So it was with great trepidation that I approached this biography of John Wayne... I'm aware there are dozens, maybe even scores, of biographies of John Wayne out there. How would I know that I picked the right one? What if I got something that dragged his name around in the mud too much... there are a lot of critics of Wayne out there, most people my age think of him as a joke. I don't want to read several hundred pages by someone who thinks he's a dickhead. Luckily this book, The Man Behind the Myth, turned out to be perfect and exactly what I was after.

The author, Michael Munn, is a journalist and one-time friend of Wayne. He knew Wayne in the '70s when Wayne was winding down his career and Munn was just starting out. Munn alleges that they actually became friends, and if the conversations relayed in this book are even slightly authentic then I think this can probably be believed. Munn uses his own personal contact with Wayne to shed light on the many controversies Wayne faced in his fifty year career, and he takes us from the myth's early creation right up until the man's death and subsequent canonisation.

There was a lot in this book that I was unaware of, being relatively new to all the trivia that lives behind the facades of mega-celebrities like Wayne. For instance, I had no idea that Wayne's speaking voice was the result of his screen persona and not the other way round, nor was I aware that he was once an eloquently-spoken and naive college boy. The book doesn't shy away from Wayne's dodging of the draft (often cited as evidence of his cowardice) and claims that Wayne actually wanted to join up but was prevented by the US government. This could very well be baloney, but it's something we'll probably never know for sure.

There are also some exciting assertions that Wayne actually recieved death threats from Stalin and that Stalin even tried to have him assassinated! (This sequence of the book, whilst very entertaining and eye-opening, is particularly hard to swallow - it's said that Wayne actually caught two Soviet spies and handed them over to the authorities). With this in mind it's hard to know where the man ends and the myth begins and the book tries to be as honest about it as it can, but even with Wayne's word it's something that you can never trust one way or the other. I was kind of glad that Munn's deconstruction of Wayne's screen image actually brought to light some previously unseen real-life toughness... whether it's true or not, I don't really care to know.

Wayne was exceptionally prolific on the screen, with well over 100 film credits, and Munn does an outstanding job of taking us through everything worth hearing about. He writes in a clear and easy to understand fashion, never falling into the trap of waxing lyrical or descending into technical film jargon, nor does he sensationalise anything. It's exactly the way a biography should be written... respectful to it's subject, unafraid to address anything related to the subject, and presented in an enjoyable and entertaining fashion.

I'll just finish off with this off-the-record quote from the book. It's from Wayne himself and it blows to pieces the misconception that he was a right-wing monster, it concerns his friendship with Rock Hudson...

"Who the hell cares if he's a queer? The man plays great chess... I couldn't understand how a guy with those looks and that build and the... manly way he had about him could have been a homosexual, but it never bothered me. Life's too short."

The Beaver

"Oh come on, it's a radio show. People can't see the puppet... so why talk through the puppet?"

The above quote comes at a point in The Beaver where Mel Gibson's character, Walter, has become something of a small-time media celebrity. This is due to his quirky success as a toy company executive who has a beaver hand-puppet do alll his talking and decision-making for him. The speaker, a radio presenter, represents a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the public - they don't get that it's symptomatic of an underlying illness and not a ploy for attention, and this is part of what this film is all about. It's a metaphor for the way a lot of people don't really understand the full extent of depression, bi-polar and other forms of widespread mental illness.

When I first heard about this movie I thought the Beaver was going to be obnoxious and destructive in it's interaction with Walter, but it simply takes Walter's place. It's just there as a better and more functional version of Walter (albeit with a Ray Winstone-ish British accent). The film starts out as a black comedy (with Walter failing to hang himself, and showering with his puppet) but then it gets very, very dark and messed up. It's better than a cheap comedy. After a while the Beaver feels real, such is the depth of Gibson's performance in this strange role. It feels real.

After his recent media attention and public (mis)behaviour, it's been suggested that Gibson's career (especially as an actor) is nearly over. Much like Mickey Rourke with The Wrestler, Gibson lets art imitate life here to tap into a hitherto unseen vulnerability that combines his earlier 'man man' roles (Mad Max, Lethal Weapon) with real life experience and pain. Walter comes from a family with a history of suicide and depression, and is a man who has lost faith in himself in every way. Gibson really plays it to the wire and gives it all he's got, and I can only marvel at the way he effortlessly switches between this completely broken man and the charmingly rough but 'onest persona of the Beaver.

This film pays out a fantasy where depression can be combated by reinvention, and whilst that sounds irresponsible, it's actually a satire in that it shows the effects of depression through an exagerrated farce,. That's what I got out of it anyway. It uses this fantasy scenario to deconstruct the reality of depression in a way that's not usually made very clear in films. So when Walter finally realises that the only way to be rid of the Beaver (and truly get 'better') is to violently reject it, don't expect an ending in keeping with either traditional Hollywood narratives or realism. Jodie Foster uses this fable to show how people can be cut adrift in this modern society, unable to communicate with each other or even with themselves.

Oh yeah, I should've said that earlier. Jodie Foster directed this movie. She casts herself in the completely thankless role of Walter's wife, but this is most likely because it was the easiest way to retain directorial control of a role that needed to remain thankless. There's a subplot about Walter's eldest son (Anton Yelchin), an enterprising and confident young man with a talent for taking on the writing voices of other people, but I have to say that I would've preferred for the film to focus solely on Gibson. Sure, it links in with Gibson's part in that Jr. doesn't have a a true identity of his own because he's afraid of being like his father, but I'm just getting really tired to seeing films where high school kids talk and act like adults.

Anyway, if you're looking for something a bit different that features the (criminally underseen) performance of Gibson's life, then I highly recommend this thought-provoking and twisted dramedy.

DIRECTOR: Jodie Foster

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Kyle Killen
KEY ACTORS: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Zachery Booth, Cherry Jones, Riley Thomas Stewart

RELATED TEXTS:

- Jodie Foster previously directed Home for the Holidays and Little Man Tate.
- Foster and Gibson also appeared together in Maverick.
- Gibson has also done mental illness/depression in Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Conspiracy Theory, Hamlet and The Man Without a Face.