Quizwoz Answers - Christmas 2012

Christmas Quizwoz: 
The Answers

Hi there.

Thanks to all of you who played. Had some very impressive answers back but nobody got a full house of correct answers on their first entry. However, very special shout out and congratulations to... drumroll please...

Leilani Holmes aka @momentsoffilm

I was very happy she had a go at this because she’s a good writer/director and I’ve reviewed her work before, here and here. So loads of respect to her for being the winner of this year's Christmas Quizwoz by getting the most right with a whopping 17 out of 20! Power to her.

Right then... here are those questions with the answers in full...

Q1. 
Which two directing K’s made contemporary movie versions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and what were the two films called?
Well the K’s who I was looking for were the directors Kurosawa and Kaurismäki, who both made their own versions of Hamlet in a contemporary setting. Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and Aki Kaurismäki's Hamlet Goes Business (1987).

Q2. 
What is a common factor, which is fairly unique in films, of the 1952 version of The Prisoner Of Zenda, the 1991 version of Cape Fear and the 1998 version of Psycho?
Only one person got this question right in their original entry. People quite rightly pointed out that all of these films were remakes... but that in itself is not really unique to these three films. We’re at a stage right now in movie history where we have remakes coming out our ears. 

These three movies are quite special in that, for each of these, the original musical score from the previous version was reused for the remake. 

So for the 1952 version of The Prisoner Of Zenda, Alfred Newman reused his own musical score from the 1937 version. For the 1991 version of Cape Fear, Elmer Bernstein was called in to re-record/adapt Bernard Herrmanns famous score for the 1962 version (along with a cue or two from his rejected score to Torn Curtain I believe) and for the1998 version of Psycho, Danny Elfman was called in to adapt Bernard Harrmann’s (once again) iconic score to Hitchcock’s 1960 original.

Q3. 
What do Bob Holness, Barry Nelson and Daniel Craig all have in common?
Well, they’ve all played James Bond. Barry Nelson played him first in the original TV version of Casino Royale in 1955 then, two years later, Bob (Blockbusters) Holness played him on the radio in an adaptation of Moonraker. Then, of course, Daniel Craig started playing Bond from the third version of Casino Royale onwards.

Q4. 
Mechanismo and Dangerous Days were both early working titles for which movie?
They were both early working titles, at various script stages, of the film that was finally called Blade Runner.

Q5.
What do Robert Siodmak, Don Siegel and Andrey Tarkovsky have in common?
They all made film adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (Tarkovsky’s was a short). All three are still available, I believe, on a 2 disc DVD set from Criterion.

Q6.
In which movie did Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman first appear together?
They both appeared together in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Portman played Queen Amidala/Padme and Knightley played her loyal decoy/impersonator.

Q7. 
The two Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie were named after characters from which seasonal film favourite?
Named after the cop and the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life.


Q8. 
Keye Luke took over the role of which oriental detective in the last of a running series of films about the character, and which actor did he replace?
Another one which really seemed to fox people. While it’s true that Keye Luke played Lee Chan (Number One Son) in many of the Chan films (and even played the voice of the great detective himself  in the Hannah Barbara cartoon, years later), he also played the Lee Chan character once in a Mr. Moto film too. However, the actual answer is that he took over the role of Mr. Wong, previously played by Boris Karloff in a short series of films, but then replaced by Keye Luke for the last one in a very different interpretation of the role.

Q9. 
Philip K. Dick’s short story Second Variety was adapted into which film?
This was Screamers, one of the more faithful adaptations of Dick’s work to appear on screen. This is not to be confused with the film Island Of The Fishmen, which was also known as Screamers in some territories.

Q10. 
To date, in Doctor Who, which of The Doctor’s companions has appeared, at one time or another, with the most incarnations of The Doctor?
Sarah Jane Smith as played by Elisabeth Sladen. She has appeared with seven of the Doctors, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th and 11th Doctors.

She was a regular companion to both the 3rd and 4th Doctors, then met the 1st (played by Richard Hurndale covering for a dead William Hartnell), 2nd and 5th also, in the anniversary show The Five Doctors. She also appeared with the 10th Doctor a number of times and, most recently before her death, with the 11th Doctor (alongside Katy Manning reprising her role as Jo Grant). 

Q11. 
In television, perceived competition from Davy Jones in The Monkees at a similar time slot lead to the creation of which character for the second series and onwards of the original Star Trek?
Ensign Chekov, as played by Walter Koenig, was brought in from the second series onwards to compete with the popularity of the Davy Jones character in The Monkees. He was a much younger cast member and he even had the same kind of face and was given the same haircut.

Q12. 
The two main protagonists from Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset make an ambiguous cameo appearance in which animated movie?
The two characters pop up in Linklaters animated movie, Waking Life.

Q13. 
Which two Peter Cushing movies also feature the talented Caroline Munro?
The two stars both appeared in Hammer’s Dracula AD 1972 (um... 1972) and Amicus’ At The Earth’s Core (1976).

Q14.
Ron Moody appeared as a character in the pilot episode of a TV show, but was replaced by Roddy McDowell in the actual series of what?
Tales Of The Gold Monkey. Ron Moody played Bon Chance Louie in the original pilot episode but Roddy McDowell took over the role from the next episode.

Q15. 
In the Toho classic that had an alternate US title in one of its early releases as Godzilla VS The Thing... who/what was revealed to be The Thing?
Mothra. Indeed, in many countries the film is known as Mothra VS Godzilla.

Q16. 
“Man Is The Warmest Place To Hide.” Which 80s movie had this tagline on the poster?
And talking about “things”... “Man Is The Warmest Place To Hide” was the poster tagline to John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Q17. 
Which of Roger Corman’s famous Edgar Allan Poe “adaptations” for AIP was actually an uncredited adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward?
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace... which so wasn’t Edgar Allan Poe’s, save for a few lines quoted from a poem at the end.

Q18. 
The title of which Michael Crichton novel (and subsequent film adaptation) is an homage to a famous story by Arther Conan Doyle?
The Lost World (later known as The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2) after the first of the Sherlock Holmes creator’s Professor Challenger stories, which features dinosaurs.

Q19. 
Which Spaghetti Western is a remake of one of the Zatoichi (The Blind Swordsmen) films?
Blindman (1971)... which also featured Ringo Starr as a Mexican villain.

Q20. 
Noel Neill replaced another actress from the second season onwards (1953 - 1958) on a TV show playing the same role which she’d formerly played in two Columbia serials in 1947 and 1950. What was the role?
Lois Lane! Noel Neill took over the role from Phyllis Coates in the famous George Reeves show The Adventures Of Superman. Coates had played her for the first series but ducked out for the other five. Noel Neill was already familiar with playing Lois Lane as she had played her twice before in the two Kirk Alyn Superman chapter serials... Superman (1947) and Atom Man Vs Superman (1950 - the Atom Man was Lex Luthor).

Gremlins Christmas Double

Mogwai-Fi

Gremlins
1984 USA
Directed by Joe Dante
Warner Brothers DVD Region 2

Gremlins 2: The New Batch
1990 USA
Directed by Joe Dante
Warner Brothers DVD Region 2

Okay then.

For my other Christmas double bill I chose the two Gremlins movies, the first of which is set at Christmas.

Gremlins
I remember all the hoopla surrounding this film when it came out, which was much more focused on the “Steven Spielberg presents...” part than any contribution by the wonderful director Joe Dante. There was an absolute obsession with the cute furry creatures in their “mogwai” stage and I remember all the kids used to have either a plush, furry mogwai or a rubber, flexi-gremlin figure. If you went to the seaside and looked at any crane machine, these things were filled with little mogwai. This film caught the public imagination and didn’t let go for a while and the first movie, at the time, deserved its success, I think.

Starting off as a little tongue-in-cheek urban myth from the Second World War, if I’m not mistaken, the idea of gremlins as the creatures who were always blamed for malfunctions in machinery in that period became very popular at the time. These days if something goes wrong with a piece of software we say it’s got a “bug” in it... if something was going wrong with something in those days it was a “gremlin”. This was lovingly personified in an old episode of The Twilight Zone (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet) where William Shatner gets hysterical watching a small “gremlin” taking apart the engine of the passenger plane he is travelling in and it was this story which was later remade for release the year before Gremlins in 1983 and used as one of the segments in Twilight Zone: The Movie. The production of the  movie presumably sparked the imagination of Spielberg enough to get Gremlins off the starting block and he hired Dante, who had directed a different segment of the Twilight Zone movie, for the job.

The film is a bit of a classic and, though I found it had dated quite a lot since the last time I’d watched it, I still think it’s a classic piece of movie making. I’m not going to summarise the movie here too much, suffice it to say that when free-lance inventor Randall Peltzer buys the mogwai for his son Billy for Christmas, the three “rules” that one must never break when looking after such a creature are quickly and accidentally broken, which leads to the birth of a fresh spawn of mogwai (from water) who then gestate and metamorphose, once they’ve eaten “after midnight” into creatures that are, way more than mischievous. Indeed, I remember there being some quite hard censorship objections to the film which made the national news at the time because, although it’s clearly intended for a young audience, it was slapped with a 15 rating due to some quite nasty sequences involving gremlin death (gremlin pulverised in a liquidator, gremlin shredded in a waste disposal unit, gremlin exploding in a microwave etc) which worried the hell out of parents and censors at the time.

And that’s the little trick of Gremlins, in that it takes the, now familiar, key signatures of Dante’s work in the lighthearted touch of an old Warner Brothers cartoon sensibility but then swiftly, about half way through, turns into a much more darker entertainment, much more akin to a horror movie, as the film's main human protagonist fights off a gremlin who is trying to chainsaw him to death, for example.

Still, if you’re of an age when you are not going to get freaked out by such stuff (I must have been 16 at the time I saw it on its original cinema release) then it was a great little movie and packs a lot of industry in-jokes in such as having people like composer Jerry Goldsmith appearing in a few shots, along with The Time Machine and the original Robby The Robot from Forbidden Planet... indeed, the much used Robby even does some lines from his debut appearance in this film if you listen carefully.

Talking of Goldsmith, the score is composed by him in his usual effective and entertaining style (he was a frequent collaborator with Dante and was able to capture just the kind of atmosphere that was required) and its fitting that he was called in to score this as he composed the music for Twilight Zone: The Movie which included a little melody, orchestrated for dominant fiddling, for the gremlin on the wing story which Goldsmith appropriately used as the basis for the main gremlin theme in this movie.

It’s still a great watch of a movie and is full of fun, moving sequences of unabated cuteness, quirky and dark horror and it has a beyond fun score. Definitely one to watch out for if you’ve never encountered it before.

However... then came Gremlins 2: The New Batch... and my view of that one remains exactly the same as the only ever time I saw it, when it was released in cinemas back in 1990.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Gremlins 2: The New Batch has more of everything in it, concentrated in a single more claustrophobic space of a tower block which is obviously inspired by the Trump tower, known as the Clamp tower. Indeed, there’s even a main character clearly modelled on Trump in the movie. So the main human protagonists from the first film, Billy and his romantic interest, are now working in this tower in the big city, where they once again encounter the original mogwai from the first movie, Gizmo, who is once again accidentally forced to spawn a mischievous and deadly infestation of gremlins which the humans must try to stop leaving the tower and reaching the streets of New York.

But where, say, a film like Die Hard worked better from limiting the setting, the second Gremlins movie just becomes hamstrung by the indulgence of the director who is allowed to let his toys out to play in earnest. There are the usual movie references (Christopher Lee playing a mad scientist who is, at one stage, seen carrying one of the original seed pods from the 1950s version of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers) but somewhere in the midst of all this excess of cute gags designed purely for laughs, the film kinda forgets to make us feel anything or let us care for any characters.

Worse, it betrays the memory of the first film where characters you thought were killed by the Gremlins are brought back (aw, they were only slightly injured after all) and even the brutal but effective sequence where Phoebe Cates character Kate in the first film explains exactly why she hates Christmas... is spoofed and made light of in this movie in a sequence that leaves a bad taste of condescension in the mouth.

Even Goldsmith’s Gremlin Rag has been transformed by the composer into something that is a little more like a “pop-shortening” of the original theme and it’s far less effective than his score to the first movie... and certainly less fun.

All in all I generally like Joe Dante and think films like the original Gremlins, Matinee and Looney Tunes: Back In Action are all little masterpieces... but I think Gremlins 2: The New Batch is probably one of his all-time worst movies and it feels much less subtle and overplayed than the original classic.

At the end of the day, most fans of the first movie are going to want to see this one due to the memories of the first, but I really wouldn’t recommend this second, over-blown yet watered down confection to anybody. Stick with the original movie and give this second a wide berth.

Die Hard Christmas Double

Merry Yippee-Ki-Ay

Die Hard
1988 USA
Directed by John McTiernan
20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

Die Hard 2: Die Harder
1990 USA
Directed by Renny Harlin
20th Century Fox DVD Region 1

Okay. So I thought, rather than hook up with Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life for Christmas again this year, I’d watch a few alternative Christmas movies to celebrate the festivities instead. Rare Exports you already know about (reviewed here) and my next choice this year was to take another, long overdue, look at the first two Die Hard movies, both of which are set during the Christmas period.

Before I go into these, however, I just want to make one thing clear... I really like Bruce Willis.

I understand, from stories I’ve heard told by co-stars and directors alike (James Garner and Kevin Smith) that he can be a real pain to work with. I’d even gleaned that myself from documentary material I watched years ago on Terry Gilliam’s excellent 12 Monkeys, where Bruce was questioning the direction of a scene with Gilliam. To which my initial reaction was, “Shut up Bruce, he’s a director and you’re just an actor who’s not doing what he’s told you. Do what he tells you to!” Which is probably a less actor-friendly reaction than I maybe should have had, actually, and I probably wouldn’t have the same take on that these days... but when it’s Gilliam you have to recognise directing genius and so... anyway... enough of that...

Bruce Willis is one of the very few modern actors who would have fitted right in with the old studio star system. It may sound obvious but most modern actors and actresses are usually just really good (or bad) modern actors and actresses, period. They are not the larger than life personalities who were seen regularly performing or abusing their craft back in the 20’s, 30s, 40s, 50s and even the 60s. There are very few these days, for example, who could stand head and shoulders with the likes of John Wayne, Errol Flynn, James Cagney, Charlton Heston, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn and the like. These weren’t just actors, they were stars... they had a large following of fans for many decades and their names brought the audiences to their movies in droves. These days, there are just a handful who can sustain that kind of interest over a long period of time and be popular enough to be caricatured for their specific personalities and character traits. I’d say, off the top of my head, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner... maybe Johnny Depp... and Bruce Willis is very much a part of this very exclusive set of the modern equivalent of old-time studio “stars”. At least that’s how I see him.

As for Die Hard... well my perception was always quite contrary to most people’s opinions in that I actually thought they got better each movie, with number 3 being the greatest, and then dropping back slightly with 4, which I still enjoyed better than the first one... except... looking at the first two now, I don’t things are quite that simple.

I’ve told this story before in my review of the Frank Sinatra film The Detective (see here) but Die Hard is an adaptation of the sequel novel to The Detective and when Frank Sinatra, after being given first option to replay the character in the sequel, refused that option, the character’s name was changed to John McLane and tailored to give the rising star Bruce Willis (who I and probably most people only knew from his stint on the excellent TV show Moonlighting at the time... although I’m not sure how that show would hold up these days) a shot at big screen stardom. Die Hard, and a few other movies he did, really cemented his reputation and kick started his big screen movie career... a career in which, even when he’s playing a parody of himself in films such as The Expendables 2, shows no signs of letting up (indeed, his fifth Die Hard movie is due to open here next year, at time of writing).

The first Die Hard was originally something of a disappointment to me twice, I’m afraid. I first saw this maybe 6 months to a year before it actually got released at cinemas. A friend of mine who I used to visit had one of those “very 80s” dodgy videos-to-your-door, pirate services (which is why I saw the original, uncut version of Wes Craven’s Last House On The Left when I was in my teens). We all sat and watched this fairly fuzzy copy of Die Hard and my friends all loved it. I thought it was nothing special but, by the time it was released in cinemas and my friends were still going nuts about it, I’d convinced myself that maybe I’d just seen it in the wrong frame of mind, on a fuzzy pirate, and that maybe I was missing something. So when a bunch of friends went to take another look at the movie when it hit the big screens, I went with them. My verdict? it really was nothing special... I’d been right.

Then I remember going to see the second one when that came out and thinking that it was much better than the first... and I was very impressed with the third one. Watching the first two again I realise that my perceptions of the films have changed and I think I prefer the original over the sequel now... and I think it’s because I can better appreciate the design of the shots now than I could previously.

Die Hard
Die Hard is a much better action movie than I thought... but it’s a film which takes away from itself even as it gives. To explain: visually the film is actually pretty good. The film can, in many cases, work with an absolute minimum of extraneous detail but it’s like the producers got worried about it and looped in unnecessary dialogue and exposition which detracts from the films obvious visual strengths.

For example, a shot near the start is a perfect way to demonstrate this. We already have established that Bruce Willis is playing somebody called John McLane and that he’s there to visit his wife and kids. A little while later we get a female character who goes into her office to get the phone and sits with her back to us, talking to John McLane. She is on the extreme left of screen and the camera is focusing on the photographs on the shelf behind her which take up the rest of the screen and, as the camera pans and dollies to show more of these details, we finally see a photograph of her and Bruce Willis together, signifying to the audience that this, is indeed, Mrs. McClane. This is an impressive use of visual shorthand to establish characters and their relationship to each other without actually having to spell things out in as dumb a fashion as possible to the audience.

But then, of course, the movie does then spend the next ten minutes or so spelling it out less subtly and in no uncertain terms that these two are actually married (although living apart). This takes away all the strength of the visual material and dilutes it down while at the same time re-enforcing the concept. Which is a shame because the movie is full of visual flourishes like this. John McClane’s lack of shoes is elaborated on twice visually before the camera decides that the shoes he’s left in his wake are not enough of a clue to the bad guy (played by Alan Rickman, one of the more intelligent presences in Hollywoodland screen villains) and so throw in a shot or two where he notices John McClane is not wearing shoes and then gives the order to shoot out the glass on a floor. They really didn’t need to do that as it then makes no sense to establish this earlier in the film and give it such an elaborate set-up with a conversation that takes place on a plane. So that’s a bit of a problem for me.

A small problem, too, is Willis’ early screen performance where either he, improvising, or the script writers, were not willing to allow him to relax into the role without cracking a steady stream of Moonlighting-style one liners. This doesn’t really help the movie and, since he’s on his own for most of the film, these little monologues come off less as James Bond-cleverness and a lot lamer than the producers probably realised. When he’s not wise-cracking, though, Willis does a really good job and you can see how the writers got the ingredients right and why he was propelled to big screen success from this movie.

The score is fantastic too, although I understand there was a lot of “management intervention” on this one (there's a moment which bugged me right from the first time I saw it where James Horner's score for ALIENS is tracked in). The late, great Michael Kamen goes for what would be his typical action-writing sound but because of the film being set at Christmas, introduces quite a few seasonal touches which are woven into the underscore and work at, for most people, an unconscious level. Trust me, you’ve never heard the opening of Winter Wonderland orchestrated so sinisterly as it is in here. He’s also used quotes from Beethoven’s Ninth to establish the origins of the villain in this one and, for some reason less obvious to me, unless it’s foreshadowing a scene involving a sprinkler much later in the movie, musical quotes from Singin’ In The Rain. Whatever... it all works very well and is fittingly regarded as an all time action classic in regards to scoring as well as it’s similar status as a movie in its own right.

With its claustrophobic setting, with only infrequent breaks to show what is going on outside the “tower block under siege” element of the story, Die Hard is a much more enjoyable film than I’d originally thought it and, because of the strength of the holiday spirit in both the dialogue and the score, is a great little action movie to watch in the run up to Christmas.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Die Hard 2: Die Harder is a different story. John McTIernan is replaced as director by Renny Harlin (a director I actually quite like for action films, despite his reputation) but, perhaps because it’s based on a book by a totally different author - 58 Minutes by Walter Wager - the film does not plunge the John McLane character (who was again, obviously, not the character who was in the original novel) into a “single player” claustrophobic situation like the first. In this one the action takes place in an airport one snowy Christmas while he, aided and abetted at various times by people he finds along the way, fights to stop a team of crack mercenaries and a team of professional soldiers (who they are in cahoots with) from freeing an important political prisoner when he lands.

To do this, the bad guys knock out communication and leave loads of planes circling in the skies above the airport, ready to crash when they run out of fuel, and the tension and suspense of this movie is about whether John McClane can take the bad guys out and find a way of getting the planes to land safely, before his wife’s plane crashes into the runway.

Well, I say tension and suspense and I suppose it’s fair to say that these elements are present in the movie, but they are just not tightened up to screaming point as they were in the hands of director McTiernan in the first movie. Harlin makes movies which are action spectacles for the sake of the guns and explosions, I think, and while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this very valid approach to making movies... it’s just not quite as effective as the first in the sequence. Although, as I said earlier, when this one first came out, I was singing a different song.

Saying that, though, there’s still some nice things in this movie. Willis is still spewing unwanted monologues everywhere but, also, is consistent in the role and very watchable. The iconic legend who was Django, Franco Nero, is also in this one as the political prisoner villain, but I have to say he was really wasted in this. I wish he’d have been playing the main villain on this one because I still see Nero as a man of action and it was only three years prior to this movie that he’d made his “official” Django sequel, Django Strikes Again... and so he could still do all the physical stuff. He does, though, add a certain weight to the role... so maybe that’s why they picked him. Whatever reason, it’s certainly good to see him and this element, along with plenty of action sequences from Willis and another, out-the-park musical score from Kamen (which is, alas, not as Christmassy in spirit as the tone of his first Die Hard score), make for a very entertaining Christmas action movie.... if not quite as taut as the first.

So that’s one of my Christmas doubles then... after which I watched... ahh, you’ll find out.

Die Hard and Die Hard 2: Die Harder have both dated quite a bit... this is the age of the pager, not the mobile phone, when these movies were made. In fact, it strikes me as I write this now that you just  couldn’t make these movies with this kind of story anymore because the invention of the common-or-garden-everybody-has-one mobile phone would kind of make the necessary communication limitations on the plot redundant. However, with the franchise still going strong, the films will be well thought of in “action-thriller” circles for quite some time, methinks, so if you haven’t seen these ones then it’s probably worth checking them out, if only to have an opinion of them.

I’m going to watch the third and fourth on BluRay sometime after the new edition of the box set comes out with an extra disc at the end of January, so I’ll let you know what I think of those two when I watch them... not to mention my verdict on the fifth one when it hits our cinemas next year.

Happy New Yippee-Ki-Ay!

Doctor Who - The Snowmen

There’s No Business Like Snowbusiness

Doctor Who - The Snowmen
Airdate: 25th December 2012. 
UK. BBC1

Warning: Oh yes. A positive web of fearsome spoilers here in this one.

Oh my God! They killed Kenny! Err... oh no... best not say that, it’s one speculative spoiler too far, perhaps... but whatever... um...

Okay then. That was bloody good.

I’m so glad and, frankly, relieved that, after complaining about four of the last five episodes in the current series, this mid-season Christmas special turned out to be... well... a little bit special after all.

This is probably going to be a fairly short review because I’ve really not very much to complain about and everything to praise... except for one thing (oh c’mon... you knew I was going to complain about one thing, didn’t you?) and that is... why the heck is The Doctor being such a sulky, stick in the mud after losing “The Ponds”. I’m not sure you can really go and sulk in Victorian London for so long and change your basic character to one of so much “bah humbug” as that. And then to change it back in a flash... that’s pretty silly. I mean, okay, you can use the riddle of the double death in this season of a character (and possibly more... will Moffat stop at just two almost impossible deaths?) as impetus to bringing The Doctor out of his sulky rut... but if you ask me the gentleman was perhaps protesting too strongly anyway, in certain sequences.

So anyway, other than that, there’s so much for people to take away and ponder from this episode...

There was the return of the lesbian silurian Madame Vastra and her wife Jenny Flint, running around London with Strax the Sontaran (all three of whom first appeared in A Good Man Goes To War - reviewed here) and who I would still like to see more of. Then there was the brilliant new assistant who first appeared in Asylum Of The Daleks (reviewed here), the first episode of this season, and there to give rise, apparently, to the kind of nerdy timey wimey and, indeed, timey-whiney attitude that stray reviewers such as myself (especially myself) are apt to engage in when it comes to complaining speculation about the tying up of loose threads (often in a less than satisfactory manner, I might add) in the Moffat shows. But thats okay. It gives us something to keep us busy complaining... so that’s all good.

Then there was the great idea of intelligent snow that mirrors thought and is looking to create a more stable being to wreak havoc on our tiny planet... and it’s at that point very early on in the proceedings that I should have figured out who the real villain was, but it took a little while longer and I can kick myself a little really because, when I first saw the new shots of the doctor wearing the top hat I thought to myself it was very reminiscent of another long gone Doctor who I remember being drawn in a very similar fashion in reprints from various Doctor Who annuals when I was a kid.

Okay, so the theme for this episode, and perhaps this series is, if I’m not very much mistaken... and I might well be, let’s face it, I’m probably wrong almost as often as I’m right on this stuff... is my favourite Doctor, Patrick Troughton... the second Doctor. Honestly, the title The Snowmen was already reminiscent of the title of the story The Abominable Snowmen, after all, so it really shouldn’t have been that much of a leap for me.

Pennies began to drop only when The Doctor mentioned a good strategic attack plan would be the London tubes in 1967... which gives them time to set up shop just before Troughton’s second pop at this villain in the tubes of London in 1968. Then, when the GI initials on the card, that Richard E. Grant’s villainous character was giving out, were properly revealed as being The Great Intelligence... that was all the confirmation needed. The Great Intelligence was the villainous “thing” controlling the Yetis in the two Troughton adventures The Abominable Snowmen and The Web Of Fear. Woohoo... are we heading for our very own Yeti story at the culmination of this season? Are we heading towards a special edition of the programme where The Doctor and Clara will be CGI spliced directly into the action of whatever surviving footage there is of the Troughton episodes of The Web Of Fear in much the same way as the Deepspace Nine episode Trials And Tribbleations CGI spliced the DS9 crew back into the classic Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles, all in time for The Doctor’s 50th anniversary celebrations in November of next year?

Well, probably not that last, I suspect. Wishful thinking, the CGI splicing bit because, frankly, this is the BBC not Paramount Pictures... it probably costs a bomb to do that kind of thing well. But, you know, if they do go down that path... you heard it guessed here first!

Okay... so there was all that in this episode... what else?

Well, everything else, actually.

A bit of magical wonder as Clara Oswald Oswyn trails The Doctor to his secret, cloud hopping TARDIS lair (oh, okay, two things I didn’t like then... the new TARDIS interior sucks, it has to be said, in comparison with the last two). A bit of the old run, jump, monologue about gobbledy-gook physics and then run around a bit more... which is always good for screen time in Doctor Who (and talking about going on about Doctor Who... can they please stop pushing those two words throughout the latest series please... okay, so that’s three things I didn’t like then). The dialogue was fantastic, with some brilliant high comedy in a three hander between The Doctor, Clara and Strax as the audience are introduced to the inherent properties of a “memory worm” in, probably, the most humorous way they could. The framing was clean and the editing pacey and coherent (coherent is good and not always something which can be counted on these days, to be honest) and the music, elegant and melodically Victorian, was very impressive... with Murray Gold’s Eleventh Doctor sub-theme only being pushed about three times in the episode, saved for the occasions when The Doctor was doing something extremely... well... Doctor-like. Which is what good leitmotif should do, I guess. There was also a nice but of musical parody when The Doctor was pretending to be Sherlock Holmes where Gold wrote and orchestrated a cue in a nod to the music being used currently on Moffat’s other succesful TV show, Sherlock... so that was a nice bit of business.

Okay, so I’m not going ot labour the point here... this episode was a marked change in tone and pace (by which I mean it wasn’t deadly dull like a lot of the episodes this series) and overall, this and the usual promise of puzzling things to come, which I’ve fallen for yet again (even though Moffat usually lets me down big time with his end games) is enough to keep this viewer on board for the rest of the series, for sure.

Really strong episode. Well worth your time and especially if you’re a fan of the Troughton era... now if they can just bring Jamie and Victoria or Zoe back for the finale, then I will be fairly happy. Great episode... well worth a watch. Can’t wait to watch again on DVD.

Christmas 2012

Click picture to embiggen!

NUTS4R2 wishes you all a very 

MERRY CHRISTMAS 

and a healthy and prosperous

HAPPY NEW YEAR

More reviews up very soon. Have a good one!

Movie Quizwoz - Christmas 2012

Christmas Quizwoz

Just for fun.

My “hopefully” fiendish Christmas Quizwoz (aka The Quizard Of Woz). Mostly film and TV questions but some books and stuff thrown in for good measure too. Absolutely no prizes, but if you send your answers here... nuts4r2@hotmail.com... I’ll list the people who got the most answers right... along with the actual answers very soon after the closing date (please remember to say how you want to be named in case you are a high scorer).

If you're gonna have a go, please get your answers to me before noon on New Years Eve, UK time.

Good luck.

Q1. 
Which two directing K’s made contemporary movie versions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and what were the two films called?

Q2. 
What is a common factor, which is fairly unique in films, of the 1952 version of The Prisoner Of Zenda, the 1991 version of Cape Fear and the 1998 version of Psycho?

Q3. 
What do Bob Holness, Barry Nelson and Daniel Craig all have in common?

Q4. 
Mechanismo and Dangerous Days were both early working titles for which movie?

Q5.
What do Robert Siodmak, Don Siegel and Andrey Tarkovsky have in common?

Q6.
In which movie did Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman first appear together?

Q7. 
The two Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie were named after characters from which seasonal film favourite?

Q8. 
Keye Luke took over the role of which oriental detective in the last of a running series of films about the character, and which actor did he replace?

Q9. 
Philip K. Dick’s short story Second Variety was adapted into which film?

Q10. 
To date, in Doctor Who, which of The Doctor’s companions has appeared, at one time or another, with the most incarnations of The Doctor?

Q11. 
In television, perceived competition from Davy Jones in The Monkees at a similar time slot lead to the creation of which character for the second series and onwards of the original Star Trek?

Q12. 
The two main protagonists from Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset make an ambiguous cameo appearance in which animated movie?

Q13.
Which two Peter Cushing movies also feature the talented Caroline Munro?

Q14. 
Ron Moody appeared as a character in the pilot episode of a TV show, but was replaced by Roddy McDowell in the actual series of what?

Q15. 
In the Toho classic that had an alternate US title in one of its early releases as Godzilla VS The Thing... who/what was revealed to be The Thing?

Q16. 
“Man Is The Warmest Place To Hide.” Which 80s movie had this tagline on the poster?

Q17. 
Which of Roger Corman’s famous Edgar Allan Poe “adaptations” for AIP was actually an uncredited adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward?

Q18. 
The title of which Michael Crichton novel (and subsequent film adaptation) is an homage to a famous story by Arther Conan Doyle?

Q19. 
Which Spaghetti Western is a remake of one of the Zatoichi (The Blind Swordsmen) films?

Q20. 
Noel Neill replaced another actress from the second season onwards (1953 - 1958) on a TV show playing the same role which she’d formerly played in two Columbia serials in 1947 and 1950. What was the role?

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Clausferatu

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
2010 Finland/Sweden/France
Directed by Jalmari Helander
Icon Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some slight, seasonal spoilers in here.

To say that Rare Exports is a movie about an intimidating killer-Santa is to do it somewhat of an injustice. I was looking forward to seeing this since it came out two Christmases ago but, for one reason or another, this is the first time I’ve been able to get a look at it. I finally picked up a cheap Blu Ray of it (why are Blu Ray discs cheaper than DVDs now?) and gave it some time. I have to admit, I was expecting something highly comical and camp from a film with this basic kind of premise of a group of people trying to trap some kind of “menacing Santa” but, as it turns out, this is not some piece of fluff which trades in laughs, mistletoe and wine... it’s actually a pretty decent stab at a Christmas themed horror film which doesn’t quite go the whole hog, perhaps, as I might have liked, but is certainly worth some of your time.

I have a slight problem with the ending of the movie but that’s only because the first two thirds of this thing were done so well that he ending felt a little flat after the intensity of the build up. I might be wrong but I suspect the ending could have been a lot more what I’d wanted if the film had gotten a lot larger budget... as it is, it just didn’t quite live up to my expectations of it when it came time for the “final showdown”, so to speak.

The film starts beautifully with 24 days to go until Christmas and an archeological team finding something “big”. The sponsor behind the expedition gets all excited about what he thinks they are going to find in some ice, packed in sawdust, deep within a mountain. Cut to the main protagonist, Pietari and his “friend” watching the team of archeologists. They have an argument about Santa Claus and return to their town, not far from the mountain. Pietari lives with his dad, Rauno, and they are getting through the days since the loss of Pietari’s mother and attending to their annual business with a small group of co-workers, ready to round up the year’s reindeer and slaughter them for meat.

The opening credits roll and we are treated to images from Pietari’s research into the Santa Claus legend. These show a grim portrait of Santa from a time when he wasn’t the benevolent fellow that the passing centuries have made him out to be. He tracks down the naughty kids and gives them a good, bloody scourging or dumps them alive into cauldron’s of boiling oil etc. The illustrations on display paint a nasty portrait of the “real” myth of Santa and after this, the film continues with Pietari and the gang investigating a large number of butchered reindeer and the disappearance of the archeological team.

The tone is amazing in this movie. Although there are some small laughs to be had, I think it’s true to say that the film eschews a humorous approach to the subject matter in deference to a much straighter, horror film approach to the material. This took me by surprise and really worked well. I was reminded more of David Slade’s 30 Days Of Night or John Carpenter’s The Thing while I was watching the intense build up as opposed to anything lighter, although there is actually a thin strand of dark humour weaved throughout... the film manages to establish some true moments of suspenseful terror in its short running time and even has a little trick up it’s sleeve in terms of the identity of the real Santa Claus... but I’ll leave that aspect for you to find out for yourself.

It’s really well put together, very cleanly framed and edited... you won’t have any trouble following this from a visual standpoint and there are no jumps or stutters in plot logic or fictional duration to jar you out of the action. This, combined with a very nice, almost classic 70s Hollywood style scoring by composers Juri and Miska Seppä ensures that you are both entertained and kept on the edge of your seat right until the end of the movie. This is one of those kinds of films which pull you in and keep you there until the director’s done with you.

My one real complaint is, I expect, due to financial reasons. I was waiting to see a run, jump and chase fight between our bunch of “out of their depth” heroes and what I can only guess is a giant Santa-monster. Instead, what you get is a very budget conscious third act where the true face of our legendary antagonist is not actually seen and, in the end, is fairly quickly disposed of. There’s a series of little sequences comprising an epilogue of sorts, by which time the film is now going for full on laughs, which also reveal the reasoning behind the title of the movie which are quite good, on the whole, and have an irresistible charm to them... it just doesn’t make up for the full on, gory Santa carnage I’d been led to expect from the rest of the film. Still, a slightly unsatisfying ending is no real problem for a movie that maintains such a high standard of excellence all the way through and I’m really glad I went along for this particular celluloid sleigh ride.

Rare Exports is a truly great little movie and is not to be considered a trifle of a Christmas film by potential viewers. True, there are no women in it, for some reason, but I have a feeling that this movie is going to be shown a lot on late night TV as part of one channel or another’s Christmas package for a great many years to come. More than just a piece of tinsel designed to cheer you up, Rare Exports has a real bite to it that you’ll want to sample for yourself. Make sure you get around to taking a look... and checking it twice.

Blade Runner

Errors In Replication

Blade Runner
1982 USA/China
Directed by Ridley Scott
Warner Brothers Blu Ray A/B/C

Warning: I doubt if anyone reading this has not seen this masterpiece... but I’m putting this here spoiler warning on, just in case. Also... fair warning, if you’re unfamiliar with the film you may be a bit left out in this article. I’m not going to provide a synopsis... this article is going to be long enough as it is. See one of the cuts of the movie first, then please revisit and read this article again if you have the time.

“They don’t advertise for killers in a newspaper...”

I remember hearing those words for the first time in a cinema in Enfield back in 1982.

Watching the original cut of Blade Runner now, 30 years on, those words still bring a special thrill to me and maybe it’s why the movie in the majority of its subsequent recuts and remixes doesn’t really fill me with the same enthusiasm as this initial version did.. although I’m not at all sure, to be honest, the US theatrical release was the one I actually saw in the cinema that day... my memory tells a slightly different story. But I’ll get to that soon.

I guess it’s hard for people to understand the effect that Blade Runner had on the general population of the movie going planet when it first came out that year, if they weren’t around to see it for themselves... especially now that the movie has become enshrined and recognised as the major artistic work it always was. Some people seemed stunned when you tell them just how badly it was received... or to be more precise... just how indifferently.

Here’s what happened back in 1982...

I was at school (school is something you should never subject children to, for the record) and I used to buy, whenever I could find them, two magazines which kept me fairly up to date with what was my version of the news... the British magazine called Starburst, which I’d been buying on and off (mostly off, as I never had any money) since its first issue, and the classier and slightly bulkier American equivalent of this magazine which had been going for a lot longer, known as Starlog. Now Starlog always used to get the inside dope on movies long before they ever arrived in Great Britain, and sometimes you were left in the cold waiting forever for a film to come out that you read about in Starlog but which, it turned out years later, never got any kind of general release in this country at all (and such was the fate, and why I’ve never seen, a movie I was looking forward to at the time called Heartbeeps... but that’s another story). So for months I was waiting for Blade Runner... but another kid got enthused when his Cinefex magazine arrived and covered the movie, so at least I had someone to talk to about it... although I don’t believe he actually got to see it on its initial release in the end. It didn’t actually stay at the cinema for very long, as far as I can remember.

So anyway, the movie gets quickly released and I go and see it with my parents after school one evening and I really enjoy it. It doesn’t stay for long, as I said, and that’s pretty much the last I hear of it until it comes out on the early VHS sell-through market, a few years later. That’s when I rediscover it again and it really hits me, the second time, just how special it was and why I’d loved it so much the first time around... although one of the things I notice about the VHS version is that it isn’t as violent as when I saw it at the cinema. The scene where Roy Batty squashes Dr. Eldon Tyrell’s eyes back into their sockets seems to cut away (quite poetically, I might add) to an owl looking away from the scene... and another sequence where Deckard “retires” Pris seems to be much less “in your face” too... I remembered a lot more thrashing around and shooting than on that early VHS release and, a few years later, when I get an NTSC US cassette edition of the Criterion edition of the movie, with reinstated violence (this movie had a lot of trouble with the US censors at the time, along with Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan), I realised that this version, known as the international cut, is the one I saw back at the cinema when it first came out. Now I don’t know how that happened because, I’m guessing, the UK would have supposed to have been showing the US theatrical cut... but I’m pretty sure my cinema was somehow showing this slightly longer version... I don’t know how that could have been, it’s just what I remember (it wouldn’t have been the first time my local cinema at the time had been sent the wrong print of a film though, to be sure).

So anyway, from about 1986 onwards, there was a time when me and one of my best mates went a bit Blade Runner crazy. I’d watched and rewatched the old PAL VHS version to death and knew the film and dialogue by heart by that point... but what you have to remember is that in those days, a commercial release of a movie in it’s correct theatrical aspect ratio was the exception rather than the rule... and the initial releases of Blade Runner on tape were, well, no exception. I finally figured out I needed to be seeing the thing in its full 2.35:1 aspect ratio again and I noticed one day in my local paper, that a cinema in Barnet was showing a midnight screening of the film. So me and my friend went and we got hooked all over again. I started scouring the local papers for one-off showings, when they really were one-off showings, and lots more screenings followed. Many of them didn’t finish until 2am in the morning but that was okay, we were pretty dedicated to this movie.

After a while, we realised that a small following of people, many of the same ones, were turning up to these screenings and that it was becoming quite popular as a film in a way in which it never was on it’s actual theatrical release all those years ago (this, of course, contradicts the use of the term cult when used in conjunction with film... popularity rules that clichéd notion right out). I even went to a screening at Hampstead where it screened as the second half of a double bill with Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, with Rutger Haur in attendance (he was nice enough to sign my storyboard illustrated screenplay for me, which was good of him).

And then something happened in the USA which put Blade Runner back on the map for the bigwigs in the studio marketing departments who can make a difference... and things changed. The midnight movie and repertory screenings of Blade Runner, which had been quite popular for a few years in the UK, had started to happen in the USA and, quite by accident, an LA theatre accidentally showed Ridley Scott’s original workprint, which he’d used to test screen the movies on audiences prior to recutting and releasing the movie in 1982. It was a big hit... it’s a very “different” Blade Runner experience with vast differences to the original release prints and, in some ways, almost like watching a different movie. My understanding is that, when it caught on that this was a different version of the movie playing, all the fans came out of the woodwork for it and it played to packed theatres for weeks, if not months. The film that was a huge flop on its initial release suddenly seemed to have grown some potent, biomechanically engineered legs for the audience of that particular theatre.

Warner Brothers saw dollar signs and got Ridley Scott to put a directors cut out but, sensing the timing was a “now” thing, the deadline was very tight. All Ridley really had time to do, in my understanding of events, is take off the voice over, add a dopey memory flashback of a unicorn (culled from outtakes of his later film Legend, most likely) and remove the entire original ending coda (half assembled from outtakes of the opening of Stanley Kubrik’s opening sequence for The Shining, as it turns out) and that was that. None of the extra footage and shot alterations etc from the workprint edition made it into this new 1991 “director’s cut”, which Warners managed to turn into a win anyway because, as it happens, the film was really well loved by people after all. A lot of fans of the original cut, myself included, were left a little disappointed, though. Here are the five main reasons why:

1. We liked the voice over... which we do understand was added post-preview, much against Harrison  Ford’s wishes but, whatever you think of it, it does give the original cut a certain hard-boiled film noir quality which really helps it along.

2. It’s been widely reported that the revelation that the Rachel replicant has no built-in four year life span in the end sequence was contradictory to everything we’ve known about the replicants up to that point... not true, actually. This flimsy connection only works if you interpret Harrison Ford’s reluctance to tell Rachel about her files as the knowledge that she will only live for four years... but that’s really not acknowledged. What we do know, from the rest of the dialogue in the film regarding Rachel’s origins, is that she’s a special version, possibly pre-Nexus Six or at least an early version, and quite possibly the first to have false memory implants. The main replicants in the film cannot be fixed because the four year life span engineered into them by the Tyrell Corporation is already in place... to quote Tyrell himself, it “cannot be altered in any way”... nobody says anything about not being able to make them last longer from scratch if they wanted to. In fact, the very necessity of them actually having to be rebuilt with a four year life span implies that they already have done so and then seen the need to add that feature in to iron out certain problems. And so on... I could go on all day (and will if you let me).

3. The awful, awful, badly dubbed and completely out of synch sequence where Deckard interrogates the artifical snake manufacturer wasn’t cleaned up in the slightest.

4. We all love the scene where Deckard shoots Zhora in the back a few times and she smashes through all those windows to her death. Especially when the voice-overs are present. It makes you realise just how human (yeah, human, I said it) Deckard is and helps give you a moral viewpoint of the character in much the same way that the “man with a sack” sequence in Fellini’s Nights Of Cabiria gives the character of Cabiria a massive insight into herself. But the thing is, even in this version, that darned stuntwoman who looks nothing like actress Joanne Cassidy, appears to be totally ridiculous and mismatched... especially in that dodgy wig! A hard thing to fix (back then) and we certainly wouldn’t have expected him to be able to fix that one post-release... but then again, who does?

5. Reason number five is the dumb unicorn...

A lot of people who compare the movie to Philip K. Dick’s original source novel, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? say that the movie is nothing like the book. Well... yes and no. Although the “mission brief” is virtually identical, as is at least one scene, the movie goes its own way and lots of stuff is changed. Deckard is no longer living with his wife, and his motivation for hunting down the andies (short for androids) in the book is because he needs the money to be able to afford to replace his electric sheep with a real, live sheep. Animals are scarce in the future and expensive. It’s a social embarrassment not to be owning a real one though... that would be bad. But most people can’t afford to own a real animal so there’s a thriving trade in fake electric animals which look like the real thing. This is what Deckard desires and it is this kinda stuff which drives humanity. That and their bizarre “religious coupling” with a shared vision of a figure called Mercer, who is about to be debunked on the Buster Friendly vid show any day now. This is the background milieu of the novel... and it’s very potent (if a little hard to grasp, first read around, when it comes to the concept of Mercer) and you can’t fail to be moved by the novel... like a lot of Dick’s writing. The bit where Deckard has finally earned enough money to buy/save a sheep only to have it thrown off the rooftop of his building by one of the androids is absolutely soul crushing and brilliant.

For the movie, Scott loses all the references to Mercerism (which are pretty important in the book) and most of the stuff about the animals. What he retains, however, is the empathy and moral values of the novel... and the importance of the animals The animals are all over the film in the form of references to artificial animals... and I’ve had so many people ask me why all these animal references are in the film. There’s no context to this stuff if you’re an audience unfamiliar with the original novel, you see. You have no way of knowing just how important these things are to the main characters... and so it kinda gets lost in translation... but it’s still there, etched into the celluloid in a way that would be very difficult to eradicate, even if one chose to do so.

The book also has a sequence where Deckard is forced to confront the issue of whether he is an android or not. This is a plot by the androids themselves and, it turns out, Deckard definitely isn’t... as he wasn’t in the original cut of the movie. I believe that the idea that Deckard is a replicant in the movie was never supposed to have been in the final version of the film (contrary to what Scott says about it now) and here’s why:

a. If Deckard was a much earlier model of replicant, he wouldn’t have fake memories and, although he wouldn’t be a match for a Nexus 6, he certainly would be a stronger character against the other humans (none of whom are in any way as human as the artificial replicants in the movie... who are pretty much morally superior when compared against all the “real” people in this movie). And you wouldn’t send out an inferior model of replicant to hunt down Nexus 6 models anyway, would you? Logically.

b. Getting back to the “Rachel is an experimental version” notion, the origami unicorn that gaff leaves at the end of the movie makes perfect sense. He’s basically telling Deckard that he should enjoy his time together with Rachel, because she’s a mythical creature, a soulless machine with the overt appearance of a warm-blooded human. If Deckard believes he can have a life with her, then he’s living a fairy tale... and so he’s welcome to it. That’s Gaff’s take on it anyway and hence, the origami symbolism of the unicorn. A mythical, fairytale creature.

When Ridley Scott adds the “memory” of an actual unicorn to Deckard’s dreams in the later cuts, then this kinda makes those elements I’ve mentioned above look ridiculous, flawed and, basically, as poorly thought out as anything in Scott’s Prometheus. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ridley Scott’s artistic sensibilities and Blade Runner is my favourite movie, but I think the notion that this frail, human being who even, in my favourite moment, drops his apartment key card because Rachel accidentally frightened him in the elevator, is actually a replicant is... more flawed in concept than a poor, genetically hobbled Nexus 6 model’s lifespan. If this is Scott’s choice now, well, all I can say is... Morphology? Longevity? Incept Dates? He don’t know such stuff!*

And then, for the movies 25th year anniversary, five years ago, we have the big box set in variant versions with five cuts in it, including a new, 2007 Final Cut, which is (or was, apparently) his last word on it.

There’s some extra footage in it but, to be honest, not a heck of a lot. The good things about the new cut are that he’s finally fixed the interrogation dialogue with the snake manufacturer and he’s also got Joanne Cassidy back for reshoots which he somehow manages to blend in seamlessly to replace the dodgy wigged stunt girl of all the previous versions. However, as far as the bad stuff goes, all the other complaints I had about the 1991 directors cut asides from these two fixes, still stands. This may be Ridley’s latest Blade Runner... but it’s not mine.

So onto the film itself then... if you really have never seen it and you’ve made it this far into this review, well you need to see it quick. It’s astonishing. The world Scott and his crew of artists and effects teams create is absolutely beautiful. It’s a real, lived in city of the future which, although harkening back to the Fritz Lang classic Metropolis, along with the comic-book art of Meobius, is itself a dazzling achievement and there’s no way that films like The Fifth Element and a whole plethora of science fiction movies right up to the present day would have happened in quite the same way without the influence of this amazing film.

The lighting and design of the shots and the placement of both people and elements within those shots are amazing. The vulnerability of Deckard, the very man sent to take out these super-human beings called replicants, is absolutely an untypical, of the time, character and did a lot, I believe, to relax Hollywood ideas about how emotionally and physically imperfect the main protagonist of your movie is allowed to be.

Vangelis’ score, shamefully unreleased in a proper version (and there have been numerous attempts, believe me), is absolutely sublime and weaves in and out of your mind like an earworm 20 plus years before the term was even invented. The grime and sleaze of the streets and the dregs of humanity who are still living on earth and not in one of the “off world colonies” are all given a poetic and somewhat epic feel by the mise-en-scene in general and it’s lifted to a point where it often feels like you are watching a moving version of a precious painting which should be hung in an art gallery. The poetry of the images matched note by note by the beauty of the scoring and sound design. It’s the film where the term “designer grime” originated.

There are things you’ll notice, too, if you are a fan of movie history. The “Environ Purge” screen that Ridley included in the destruction of “Mother” in Alien is recycled here, as is the Sydney Greenstreet character of The Fat Man from The Maltese Falcon, in the toys in the character, J. F. Sebastian’s apartment (Ridley loves recycling stuff... he even recycles future moments of dialogue from later on in the movie and puts it in as a sound sample in Deckard and Rachel’s Voight-Kampff scene). Loads of little details, some intentional, some not expecting to be caught years later by obsessive watchers of the movie... all of it forms a potent cocktail that will have you reaching to the back of your mouth to rid yourself of the little maggot that was lurking at the bottom of the grimy, cinematic bottle. There aren't many movies since this one which have had all their elements, perfect and imperfect, come together to create such a brilliant and awe inspiring artistic blend as this one.

The new Blu Ray edition has a replica spinner which is a lot different from the version which was released with the American briefcase edition from 5 years ago, but the digital content of the Blu Ray seems to me to be exactly the same. You have the five most important cuts: the Final Cut, the Original Theatrical Cut (which is the one which was regularly shown on its UK midnight movie revival), The International Cut (which is the old Criterion version and the one I believe I actually saw at the cinema in 1982), the Director’s Cut from 1991 (now rendered redundant for so many reasons, as far as I’m concerned) and the original preview Work Print, which is the one that caused all the fuss when it was shown by accident and which is, to say the least, a very valuable edition, featuring longer and alternate versions of some of the scenes and some of the original musical temp tracks, most of which seem to come from Jerry Goldsmith scores such as Planet Of The Apes and Alien. You also have some quite exhaustive documentaries, still galleries, trailers and deleted scenes (which one day make the cut in a “beyond final cut” I would guess). All this stuff is valuable to fans of the film and, even though it’s just a duplicate set, by and large, to what we had five years ago, it’s still something which should be applauded and rewarded with high sales. At least when Ridley Scott revises his films, some may say for the worse, he makes available all his previous stabs so you can experience the version of the film that you want to be seeing at any given time... something that a certain Mr. George Lucas might learn from, is my opinion on that one.

There’s so much stuff I could say about this movie that I could literally go on forever. How about I break the film down into 5 minute sections and write a chapter or two on each? This review is already way too long though so if there’s anything you want to know further to what I’ve written here, please leave a comment/question and I’ll try to get back to you.

One thing I will say, though, is that if you’ve never experienced this movie at a cinema, or even a massive screen, and especially if you’ve never experienced it at all... then I urge you to do so. It’s one of the greatest artistic achievements of 20th Century film art. That comes with the caveat, of course, that you try and see one of the original 1982 cuts first... my understanding of people who have just seen the "director’s cut" blind without having seen the original version are that their experience is far less rewarding without those “dreaded” (to some) voice-over narratives. Whatever you do though... go see it. Every sequence is a learning experience on the art of film.

*With thanks to Chew, as played by James Hong in the movie.

Doctor Who: The Sea Devils

Devils In The Deep Blue Sea

Doctor Who: The Sea Devils
UK Airdate: 26 February to 1 April 1972
BBC Region 2

When I was three years old I watched this serial on my mum and dad’s old black and white television set with them. We all loved it. The iconic monsters that were The Sea Devils, rising up from the surface of the sea in their string vests and waving about their strange weapons was bound to create a certain sense of fear and left a memorable impression on me... and it didn’t help that my dad kept doing impressions of them at the time. I remember being disappointed by them when they returned, with their marine cousins The Silurians (see review here), in the era of The Fifth Doctor (and I’ll know sometime soon whether I still feel the same about that) but this original serial was a big hit with me and it’s taken too long, almost 41 years in fact, for me to catch up with it again.

I’m really pleased to say that this Pertwee era story is even more entertaining than I remembered it although, to be fair, I barely remembered any of it past the obvious iconic monsters and a scene I’ll describe in a little while. It’s well written, Pertwee is in complete control of his character, Katy Manning’s Jo Grant is absolutely adorable (and adorably written) here, complete with her trademark white suits which never get dirty even when she’s been crawling through a ventilation shaft, and Roger Delgado’s triumphant performance as The Master is up to his high standard.

The only thing that surprised me was that UNIT and The Brigadier were not in this story. UNIT is mentioned enough but outside of The Doctor and Jo, their presence is never felt on screen.

The other thing that surprised me was a sequence that I’d forgotten but which made a great impression on me as a kid, when The Doctor and Jo are trying to find their way through a minefield with The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, and then use said familiar implement to blow up a load of mines to frighten off a Sea Devil. I remember incorporating this scene into games I used to play in the garden as a kid... but I’d completely forgotten both the scene and my childhood games of it until I saw it again. Little tear brought to the eye their for sure!

There’s also some amazing stuff in the storyline, like The Doctor and Jo being stranded in a fort on an island with only a sick, surviving crew member and a Sea Devil for company. That’s a really good sequence where you wonder just how our two heroes are going to get themselves out of harm’s way.

And there’s another great sequence where Delgado and Pertwee have a sword fight at the end of an episode which is so good, the entire fight is repeated at the start of the next one. And when I say good, I mean corny and riddled with typical, Hollywood swashbuckler incidents and choreography which is bound to bring a smile to the face on anyone who realises that the two actors in question must have been having a really good time shooting this.

There are some other nice action sequences along the way in subsequent episodes and there’s also a heck of a lot of location work than you might expect from a Doctor Who story arc, especially in comparison to the show today. I have to say that this one knocks a lot of the latest season’s stories for six when it comes to sheer, all ‘round entertainment value. I was really pleased that the one memory I had of this show was not marked by disappointment on the re-watch... this one was a real treat for me and I whizzed through all six episodes in two sittings. Great stuff.

Oh, and the unusual synthesiser music by Malcolm Clarke is absolutely suited to Doctor Who and probably made a big impression on me as a child too. I wish they’d have let this composer loose on some of the other stories in the series because it’s quite forward thinking for it’s time. At the very least, I wish the BBC would have a think about releasing the score properly on CD, as a four or five minute suite really isn’t good enough for this music.

A short review, then, but a very positive one. If you’re a fan of the Pertwee era of the show then this one is definitely one of the best ones to watch, I reckon. Sun, sand and sea monsters are just what The Doctor ordered, it turns out.

Left Bank (Linkeroever)

The Reborn Identity

Left Bank (Linkeroever)
2008 Belgium
Directed by Pieter Van Hees
Exposure Cinema DVD Region 2

Warning: There will be a few spoilers in this, while I gently explore what I think the film may have been about.

This is another brilliant recommendation I got from Jonathan Rigby’s book Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema (reviewed here) and, as seems to be par for the course for the movies I’ve bought off of his recommendations, Left Bank kept me thoroughly bewitched, if bemused, for the length of its running time.

In fact, it had me confused right from the start as two women were seen walking down corridors, seeking a specific “hidden” nook or cranny in a building, but only one of them seemed to stay in the narrative and even then, only for the opening moments of the film... although I believe one of these characters, at least, becomes a plot point of the movie later on. This is definitely a movie I’m going to find myself watching again once I finish my enormous backlog of unwatched discs, that’s for sure.

Left Bank is pretty much a variant of the Rosemary’s Baby school of horror movie as far as I can make out, although it would be true to say that the identity of the baby at the end of the film is not necessarily who you think it will be. And there’s no actual pregnancy involved either (except maybe in a Lynch does Eraserhead kind of way in terms of something which I think is pretty irrelevant hatching surreally out of somebody’s knee at some point). If this is confusing you already, well yeah it started to confuse me a little too, although I’m sure a second viewing where I am better able to put all the puzzle pieces together would make things much more rewarding.

Left Bank tells the story of Marie (played brilliantly by a young actress named Eline Kuppens), an aspiring Olympic runner who sustains an injury and can’t go through to the next part of her career until she has allowed herself some months rest... in other words, she’s blown it for this time around. She meets and falls for the head of a local Archery Guild called Bob (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) and, because living with her mother when she’s supposed to be at home resting up would just get on her nerves, she moves in with him in his apartment in a block on the left bank of the city. The people who inhabit the building, however, are a bit weird and when the boyfriend of the girl who used to live in their apartment before the girl vanished off the face of the earth turns up, things start to get very interesting as the previous tenant’s lover and Marie investigate the area and the people of the area, going back to centuries gone by.

The film is slowly and evenly paced, brilliantly acted and has a beautiful sense of progressing unease and suspense as it wears into its hypnotic running time. Also, the sex scenes in this one, not something I usually pick up on, are quite brilliant and joyous and shot in as naturalistic a way as the rest of the movie is put together.

There’s also a kind of surprise ending on this one... once the two would-be investigators realise something about Marie’s current boyfriend and all the previous heads of this particular Archery Guild, and the various deaths start mounting up, you think you know how it’s all been put together... even if you don’t particularly know much useful about the time shifting, muddy black hole which has been in the ground under where the apartment building has been erected since ancient times. The ending does involve a sacrifice to dark forces, as you are by this point in the running time beginning to suspect, but the nature of the particular sacrifice is not what you think it will be and it would be true to say that although the main female protagonist is left changed by the final scenes of the movie, you may find that she’s not quite changed by them in the way you think she’s going to be... and there is a certain optimism amongst all the bleakness and sinister practices which begin to hover over all the characters like a cloud as the film progresses.

Really glad I saw this one and for lovers of films with covens, conspiracies and generally organised witchery... this movie is probably going to hit the right spot for you. The ending is, perhaps, less ambiguous than it first appears... once you begin to consider all the clues... and for people who like mysteries shrouded in the supernatural, this is also for you. Very much a recommendation from me and, again, another modern classic which deserves a lot more attention than it’s been getting.