Conspiracy Theories

Theory Eyed

Conspiracy Theories
by Jamie King
Summersdale
ISBN: 978-1849537292

If this book looks and feels like a stocking filler for people at Christmas when you first approach it then... bingo! That’s pretty much exactly what it is... a novelty book which is, it has to be said, a very quick read but which, ultimately, probably won’t live up to many expectations you have of it unless you look at it for what it is. Luckily for me it was given to me as exactly that... a stocking filler at Christmas. Consequently, I wasn’t about to take much of it too seriously and that way I was bound to have an okayish time with it... which I kinda did.

Okay, lets get out of the way what this book isn’t because I wouldn’t want anybody to be misled here. Conspiracy Theories is not an in depth look at various theories and nor is it a study of the psychological factors which lead to the existence of such theories when the so called ‘facts’ of a situation are so over the top that only a child of five or some passionate, tin foil wearing nutter would give them any credence. What it is, instead, is a quick summary of many different theories with each theory briefly outlined in its own chapter... with each chapter lasting anything between one to five pages in length but with most of the entries being just under two pages. So, yeah, there’s not a lot of detail other than highlighting various different theories which have grown up around each subject.

I think where I might take the author to task a  little, although he does take this stance by his own admission, is in his lack of judgement on any of the theories proposed here. While you can tell that he has a sense of humour about certain things... such as former footballer and sports broadcaster David Icke’s belief that the world is being controlled by a group of shape shifting lizards... there are a lot of other theories where it’s less easy to tell if the writer has given any credit to them. Which is quite bad but, on reading the book I also found it kind of interesting and telling because, without that smoke screen of judgement to give the chapters an angle it produces a very uneasy realisation about some of the theories outlined here.

Why? Well because, once you get your eye in, you will start to perceive where, unless this guy is literally falsifying things for a book, the theory starts and the evidence ends. That is to say, while there are some really stupid beliefs thrown into illumination in this book, a fair few of them are not couched in the language of ‘allegedly this’ or ‘some people believe that’. Instead, the facts are presented as exactly that and though, in a number of cases, the theories they spawn can be quite devastatingly stupid (and others really not so), the facts of certain events seem to suggest that the people coming up with these things have every reason to at least look for something fishy because there seems to be no doubt in the case of certain ‘truths’ that something is being covered up.

Take the ‘suicide’ of Marilyn Monroe, for instance. I always used to accept that this was a suicide and the finding of an accidental overdose has sat quite well with me in later life when I personally know how easy it is to forget to take your pills or, worse, not remember if you took them and then accidentally double or triple up on them etc. So I’ve never really questioned this verdict too much. Funny then, that it takes a ‘novelty stocking filler’ to find out that, in actual fact, no drugs were found in Norma Jean’s digestive tract and the body was quickly, against the law, embalmed before too much close up investigation could be done. In fact, as the author here points out, if there were any drugs in Marilyns body which backed up the theory of an overdose, then the absence of them in the digestive tract means that they would have had to have been taken via and enema so... the question is... what person commits suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates up their backside? So the question then becomes... okay, so what really happened and why were all those people on the scene so fast when they lived in other cities?

Now I recently read a book called The Invisible Gorilla And Other Ways Our Intuition Deceives Us (which I reviewed here) and one of the things I got out of that was that phenomena which seem linked in a cause and effect way are not necessarily so related... at least not by a direct cause. So I’d like to think I could make an okay judgement call when it comes to certain theories based on coincidental or non dependent factors which happen at the same time. Which is why a lot of the theories in this book seem a bit wilder than I would have thought sane people could believe, perhaps. However, what it also gave me is an appreciation for when certain things could be linked, or at least worth further enquiry, and there are a fair few in this book which actually do warrant further investigation in some way, it seems to me. And the Marilyn Monroe death would be a case in point.

There are some other, quite shocking, cases which possibly could have born a better investigation at the time but which were suppressed with a certain finality so that we’ll never know the truth. The ‘murder’ of Pope John Paul the First, for instance, shows the powers that be in the Catholic church in a very bad light when it came time to find the truth, with them seemingly hindering the investigation rather than helping it. Other conspiracies in here ring true on occasion, not because of their visibility but because they are being suppressed for no reason at all. For instance, no matter what your opinion is about the true age of the Sphinx and the culture which purports to have built it... did you know that many years ago archeologists found a small chamber in it which could reveal its secrets but the Egyptian authorities have allowed nobody to open it... using an excuse about archeological protocol to keep the chamber unexplored. You’ve really got to wonder just what it is they feel they’ve got to hide, right?

And so on. I’d have to agree with a lot of the reviews of this book that say it’s got no real substance to it... or meat on its bones would be another way of saying that.. but what I think a lot of those readers might be missing is the fact that the miniscule research involved is actually quite simply written and the lack of judgement and the way in which facts and theories seem to separate themselves from each other when you start to catch the mind of the writer within the words, means its actually a quite valuable, easy reference in some ways. I can imagine some people reading this, getting turned on by facts leading to those theories and then ignoring the wild ideas concocted and actually research the stuff properly with a mind to finding some answers. So that’s probably not a bad thing, to be honest.

Either way, if you’re not expecting too much from it then Jaime King’s Conspiracy Theories is a quick and mostly entertaining read and it’s probably a good thing to be reading if you only have an hour or two of time to get through something. If it’s detail you want then, alas, this book is probably not for you. I had a fairly good time with it though and I like to think I learned something, in a way. Time may tell, I guess.

Skyline

Lack Brain

Skyline
USA 2010 Directed by The Brothers Strause
Momentum Pictures Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: I really feel I need to talk about the end of this movie so... yeah, some obvious spoilerage in this one. There will be another warning before it happens, though.

Well this is a bit of an interesting one. I missed this movie at the cinema and I think it got into trouble from having a similar theme to Battle: Los Angeles (which I loved and reviewed here) when it was released, because one of the directors worked on the effects for the other film.  That being said, I can see why they maybe didn’t get too far with that legal action because, apart from the 'aliens in a city' commonality, it’s a very different kind of movie, especially when you get to the end.

It’s actually a very low budget movie but you wouldn’t at first, know it to look at it. It had, at the time, more visual effects shots than most Hollywood blockbuster movies of that period and it’s not bad effects work... very good, in fact. However, although I knew next to nothing about the film before I watched it, as the movie wore on I began to figure out that the budget must have been quite small because, for the most part, it’s all filmed in one building... comprising two apartments, some stairs and corridors, the rooftop and a parking bay. There are a few other very brief scenes which take place in a pool (of the same building and the interior of a plane but... that’s about it). Oh... and the special effects shots of aliens and so forth riddling the skies of LA... which is pretty great looking in terms of that kind of thing, I have to admit.

The film starts off with a teaser of the main male antagonist Jarrod, played by Eric Balfour, about to get ‘snatched’ by an alien creature before jumping to fifteen hours earlier, showing him and his wife Elaine, played by Scottie Thompson, arriving in LA to visit Jarrod’s rich and successful friend Terry (played by Donald Faison) on his birthday. They go to a party and they are all sleeping in the same apartment suite when... we catch up to the pre-credits teaser and the aliens arrive and start snatching up loads of people in order to carry out their nefarious plans.

Pretty much right from hereon in, the film becomes about a small group of people trying to survive without being discovered by the aliens who, it would be fair to point out, seem fairly invincible throughout the movie. This includes, of course, all the stupid ‘shall we stay or risk making a break for it’ kind of arguments with the usual male ego stuff getting in the way of the more rational plans. So, yeah, the usual minor friction punctuated by some suspenseful scenes and some pretty cool special effects sequences throughout.

Now, I have to say that, for the first half of the movie, I found this film to be quite gripping. I was on the edge of my seat more than once and, although another person watching this with me found it irritating from the get go and opted to stop watching, I thought the build up in ‘alien invasion terror’ was quite well done and maybe suspect that the film-makers really didn’t need to opt for having the teaser scene in at the start at all... seeing how it automatically negates the usual dramas going on with the character development because, as an audience privy to what’s going to occur, you know that in 15 hours time in the character’s lives... none of that will matter.

So yeah, pretty well cobbled together for the most part and there was even a parody of the old War Of The Worlds scene with the tentacles groping around and looking for the bothersome humans which, I actually found to be far more worrying than I expected it to be... even though I knew there would have to be a scene like this in the movie at some point.

After a while though, it has to be acknowledged that I stopped liking the way the story progressed, or rather didn’t progress, during the second half of the movie. The characters are mostly making stupid decisions throughout, which didn’t help, but the lack of a budget for a larger scale story really begins to wear on the viewer after a while, I think. Everything that is seen involves one or other of the initial set of characters and we never really leave them. What this means is that when the US military is sent in to try and stop this new and fantastic alien menace, we don’t get any military point of view on what is going on as the story never goes outside the realm of what the main protagonists see. So we see battles happening from a distance without ever really getting close enough to the main action to know what the tactics being employed are. Even when we have a scene with a couple of soldiers on a roof, we’re never really told anything about what is going on.

So, yeah, the movie has a strong first half with an equally competent but increasingly dull second act, to be honest. It just gets a bit ‘samey’ after a while and I guess the budget wasn’t there to get the story onto another level when it needs to pick up at certain points although, as I said earlier, the effects sequences are astonishing. As are the aliens themselves, who seem to be half machine and half organic creatures that really probably shouldn’t have been as convincing as the special effects team are able to render them here. I’m not even 100% sure that the big motherships that come and start all the trouble are not living creatures themselves, to be honest. It’s not made clear and left for the viewer to figure out... which is okay in my book.

Okay... so now I talk about the ending so... spoiler warning... do not read the next two paragraphs if you don’t want to know.

The film does seem to be going on a bit and outstaying its welcome towards the end. It’s a bleak proposition for any survivors because, as I said, the aliens seem to be fairly invincible. The creatures have been luring humans towards them, like the sirens of mythology, with hypnagogic light shows which pacify them before they ‘eat them’ metaphorically and take them inside... where their brains are scooped out and used to install into more new aliens. Which kind of makes no sense as a way of propagating your species I reckon...

Lots of pitfalls but, then again, I don’t think like an alien, I guess. However, when the last two surviving protagonists, Jared and Elaine, are snatched, Jared’s brain is scooped out and he’s put into a new alien. Elaine is discovered to be pregnant and so she is taken ‘somewhere else’ to have some kind of other thing done to her...but here’s the thing. Jared’s brain is still thinking like he was before, so the new alien comes to the rescue of Elaine and is about to take on all the other aliens (probably unsuccessfully) as the movie ends. It’s a bizarrely interesting movie in terms of pushing the follow through of just where you can take your main male protagonist but, alas, it also doesn’t make much sense. Why would Jared’s former mentality kick in? When no other human’s does? And if that were at all possible... why would the aliens be doing this in the first place.

End of spoiler.

There’s not much logic here, it’s true but, at the end of the day, hats off to the film makers for trying something different in terms of where the story can go... even if I had lost faith in the characters by this point. The interesting but ultimately unsatisfying ending, coupled with a fairly solid first half to the movie, are enough to at least ensure I can recommend this movie to the kinds of people who like science fiction movies and alien invasion scenarios in particular. There’s a lot wrong with this movie and also a lot right. There was a sequel made which was supposed to come out last year (if the teaser posters are anything to go by) called Beyond Skyline and starring Frank Grillo but, as far as I can tell, although it’s completed, it hasn’t actually been screened as yet. I quite like Grillo, though, so I’m hoping this won’t be consigned to being on a shelf without ever seeing the light of day. That would be a shame (or possibly not, if it’s that bad).

Either way, Skyline is at least an interesting film and, though it might not have the same rewards and pleasures that other films in this kind of genre have, it’s certainly not a terrible movie and I think sci-fi fans would be wrong to ignore it. I’m not saying they’d necessarily like it but, you know, it does have some minor things to say at the end. Not one I’d watch again (the Blu Ray cost £3, brand new) but certainly good enough for one shot.

Area 51

Little Gray’s Hells

Area 51
USA 2015 (2009) 
Directed by Oren Peli
Pyke Enterprises All Region DVD

Warning: There are some major spoilers lurking in this one.

You know, I really like Oren Peli and his Paranormal Activity movies (apart from Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones - reviewed here ... which sort of failed miserably) and I did kinda remember that he was making Area 51 at some point... but I’d also forgotten about it. A friend pointed me in the direction of it as it only just came out a few months ago in some kind of ‘on demand’, non physical release (yeah, like I’d actually be interested in streaming anything you guys) and so I managed to acquire a ‘review copy’. Turns out, the film has been sitting on the shelf since its completion in 2009 and it’s not had a proper release in any way, shape or form apart from a few limited screenings and the aforementioned, non physical media... which doesn't count as a release at all, in my book.

I was interested to see the film has got bad word of mouth and people mostly think it’s not a good movie, for some reason. In fact, the one review I read sounded more like they were reacting to the movie the way I reacted to Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. However, I would like to humbly point out that my opinion of Area 51 is decidedly contrary to this. In fact, I found this to be a terrifying movie, if truth be told.

This is, of course, very much a found footage horror movie and, at the time this movie was actually shot, that approach to movie making in this genre certainly wasn’t as overused as it seems to be six years on from when this was initially made (although I’m hearing now there were some recent reshoots on this). Truth be told, a movie like this was always going to have great potential to scare me silly because of the subject matter... I had a few sleepless years researching this kind of stuff at one point and I feel fairly close to the obvious subject matter suggested by the title.

Unlike The Marked Ones, Area 51 mixes footage from multiple cameras of a bunch of young people who I actually didn’t hate. One of the group, Reid (played by Reid Warner), is the driving emphasis behind the mission as we see him disappear from a party he and his friends have been attending and then turn up again in the middle of the road hours later, suffering from missing time (a common alien abductee phenomena). We already know from fake interview footage which starts the film that, after this experience, Reid’s personality changed dramatically and his research led him to investigate UFO activity before he went away one weekend with his friends on a trip and... never returned. So, yeah, we have a little foreshadowing here, I guess, which is not too subtly done but, similarly, the found footage format does tend to disguise, or at least give credence to, a sloppier, more overt way of telling a story so it’s more than forgiveable in my book. People in real life are, it has to be said, mostly sloppy and overt.

There are some terrific sequences in this one including scenes of following a government employee, staking him out and then breaking into his home before almost getting caught. The suspenseful tension in this scene, which seems to be shot in the same house they used for the second of the Paranormal Activity movies (reviewed here), is quite palpable and this kind of “are they gong to get caught” dilemma is always something I find hard to sit through without a certain amount of anxiety anyway.

After stealing a security pass and then reuniting with the main female lead, Jelena (played by Jelena Nik), a character who’s father “committed suicide” due to his research into this stuff, one of the group is left in the car waiting overnight at the edge of Area 51 for a quick pick up while three of our ‘camera eye’ friends break into the facility at night. Now there is a certain lack of credibility in this sequence, in some ways, because you would imagine this place is a lot better guarded and secure than is suggested here. The kids break into this place easily and start roaming the corridors. The director teases us for a while by showing us alien technology, including the outside and inside of a flying saucer but also backs that up with scary looking case studies of dead humans who have met a nasty end at the hands of... whatever the government have in ‘the lower levels’. Then one of our intrepid three accidentally sets off the alarm and they get separated -  Darrin (played by Darrin Bragg) running around a few levels below the surface of the complex, while Reid and Jelena proceed to hurriedly penetrate further into the lower levels.

At this point the film becomes a chase movie with the three main protagonists trying to both evade the security guards in Area 51 while at the same time trying not to become victim to the brutal alien species in the base. The aliens are not seen that much and although I didn’t realise it at the time, I’m now thinking we see two different species of alien creature in the movie... or not see them, depending on your point of view.

Okay, it gets a little spoilery here so maybe don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want to know... The thing which impressed me with the slow, Dante-like penetration of the various levels below Area 51 by Reid and Jelena was that there is a kind of logical hierarchy to the aliens that they experience and it's the single mindedness of this follow through which makes me think that the thing chasing Darrin on the upper levels is from a different species. When Reid and Jelena come face to face with the famous, stereotypical Grays (presumably still from Zeta Reticula?), they are revealed to be just empty suits with zippers. One wonders who wears these suits... the handlers for the aliens or, I am guessing, the aliens themselves when they leave the base? They then come across some kind of machine which looks like a way of feeding blood to whatever is on the level below. When they reach that level they get chased out by half glimpsed things but then they escape through a pipe into a series of white rooms where Jelena is frozen in place and floats away. Reid gives chase, finds her and then they are both floated up to... an alien ship? Meanwhile, Darrin manages to just about escape with his life to the car but then... more of the same kind of thing.

End of spoiler.

The thing for me though, was that the hierarchy of that descent does, as I said, suggest a certain logic and a system put in place by both aliens and government working together... although the thing pursuing Darrin definitely is not something anybody wants loose, again giving credence to my theory that we are not witnessing just one alien culture at work here.

The whole film is done with 'shaky cam' style shenanigans, as you would imagine, but the sound design of the thing also nicely supports the effect of what the director is trying to achieve here... which is obviously to scare the pants off you. The general hubbub of the young protagonists reaches epic heights of noisy banter at some points, even when they are trying to stealthily sneak into Area 51 and, at first, this all really irritated me. That was until I realised that the director was using it to heighten tension through its absence in certain scenes... so when he wants to push the level of suspense right up to eleven, so to speak, everybody quietens down and we are left with one of the multiple camera viewpoints and whatever ambient sounds are put into the foley.

This is quite effective and, possibly, a natural thing to do anyway but he does it to a level where the polar opposite, when the kids are constantly talking, is something I would liken to being the audio equivalent of a director concentrating on the people in a shot and then, suddenly, shifting focus to concentrate on a small detail. It’s probably something done with sound design in a lot of movies and, certainly, there’s usually a slight ambient highlight like a low level hiss or some such effect whenever something is going to get scary when these kinds of found footage style, first person POV films are released. Maybe it’s because the tension in the room as I watched this was at the point when I was especially conscious of everything that was going on in the sound spectrum for the film. Either way, it sure was effective for me, I can tell you.

And that’s me done with Area 51 methinks. A somewhat maligned film in terms of its having no proper cinema release and something which I would have really enjoyed on a large screen, I have to say. At least I’ve got to see it now so I’m able to say that anybody who is a horror fan and into streaming films via Amazon and the like, should maybe have a look at this one while it’s available. It’s not the best of these kinds of films, for sure, but it certainly isn’t anywhere near the level of the bad ones and I found it a lot more effective than some of the movies of this nature released in cinemas these days. Give it a look sometime... you may find that it’s pretty good.

Invasion

Raiders Of The 
Lost Matriarchy

Invasion
UK 1966
Directed by Alan Bridges
Network DVD Region 2

Invasion is actually not a film I’d heard of before Network handily brought it out on DVD at the tail end of 2014... which is kind of surprising given its pedigree. Everything about it seems so comfortable and, well, British... and I find it hard to fathom that I’d never caught a showing of it on TV sometime in the 1970s or 1980s to be honest.

It’s a curious film and perhaps one of the reasons why the plot set up seems so familiar is that the screenplay is based on a story idea by Robert Holmes, who would later go on to be a regular contributor to Doctor Who. Many have said there are similarities between the main concept of Invasion and the first of his Jon Pertwee stories, Spearhead From Space (reviewed here), for instance. However, I think Invasion has less in common with that serial and more in common with the historical story legacy of Doctor Who long after Holmes death. Indeed, the David Tennant episode Smith and Jones and the first full Matt Smith story The Eleventh Hour, seem to me to have much more in common with this film than the earlier Holmes episodes. Those two, in particular, look like they’ve been extensively cribbed from this movie.

So Invasion is, basically, a black and white British B-movie science fiction film and, frankly, it’s one of the more entertaining ones I’ve seen. I really don’t understand why this film is not better known. The film starts with a military radar monitoring outpost and the low budget arrival of a spaceship on Earth... you don’t see anything but air being tracked by the camera against eerie noise and the “impression” left in the ground from where the spaceship came down initially (until the final couple of minutes of the movie when some real footage of rockets have been spliced in with the footage... although a smaller escape capsule is seen at one point). A man and his secret lover return from a party and accidentally knock down a figure in the road. After some argument they take the Asian looking figure to the local hospital and it’s here that things start to go really wrong for everyone.

The figure in the road is a being from, as far as can be gathered, a matriarchal society on another world. He feeds the doctors and nurses lies about his reasons for being there when actually he is an escaped prisoner and the aliens who are looking for him, both females of the species, have been transferring him from their world to a prison colony on another planet before they crashed on Earth. For some reason, all three aliens are played by actors or actresses of Chinese, Japanese or Korean extraction... and this is badly addressed in the script when one of the characters asks an Asian nurse if the patient is Chinese or Japanese... to which she replies in the negative. Oh, right, so must be aliens then and we’re certainly not picking on any specific racial stereotypes to identify the aliens for the audience then, are we?

Actually, while I’m on the subject, the aliens in this story are from the planet Lister and are referred to at one point as Listerines. Hmmm... quite apart from the fact that the aliens don’t seem to realise they are going around under the name of a famous antiseptic mouthwash that’s been going since 1879, the clothes they are wearing may seem vaguely familiar to any fans of kaiju eiga. That is to say, the Asian actors in this are wearing tight fitting latex jumpsuit style outfits which aren’t exactly a million miles away from the clothes the Asian aliens in such Gojira films as Invasion Of The Astro Monster (aka Godzilla VS Monster Zero, also from 1965) were wearing... so I'm wondering if their was any direct influence or borrowing going on from the costume department here as an exercise in visual short hand?

Anyway, the guy who knocked the alien over goes home and, in a nice “jump scare” moment involving some okay photography and suspenseful build up through editing, is startled by looking up at a cat on the roof of his porch and, when he looks down, there are the alien ladies standing before him. They nobble him, apparently by accident as it’s eluded by one of them that he has had a heart attack, in search of the alien’s identifying mechanism thingy which he pulled out of his car after taking the original alien to hospital... although they don’t seem to be able to find it in its carefully hidden resting place of... 'just been thrown on the nearest table'. I’ll come back to this 'thingy' in a minute. There’s a terribly big plot hole forming here, I’m afraid.

It’s not long before one of the aliens goes undercover in the hospital by disguising herself as the Japanese nurse and really being very convincing at not being spotted as an imposter by the other staff and patients in the hospital. Meanwhile, a force field is raised around the building and now that the leading characters Doctor Mike Vernon (played by Edward Judd), Doctor Claire Harland (played by Valerie Gearon) and their new military friends are kind of aware of, and totally believing in, what is occurring... the air is slowly running out in the hospital and grounds. There’s actually a really nicely done and completely unexpected shock effect moment in this where one of the Hospital staff goes to fetch help and is killed as his car crashes into the invisible force field, revealed for the first time here, as he goes through the window of the crumpled car. The music is non existent during this, and many other scenes, but the low key atmosphere really works well within this kind of claustrophobic setting, I think.

After this, Mike goes on a mission to retrieve the 'alien thingy' at the original driver’s house by going through the sewers. When he returns with the device he is confronted by the alien lady in the hospital who, it seems, couldn’t care less about the device and just wants to be taken to the prisoner so she can take him back into custody... which is where the plot gets really odd actually because, she’s known where he is all along, actually helping the other nurses look after him. This makes no sense people!

The fun and games continue with the original alien taking Mike’s sweetheart Claire hostage as he tries to make his way to his crashed escape capsule, including a very unsatisfactory deus ex machina kind of ending which just seems tagged on for a quick resolution. Now, to be fair, the main factors which make the initial and promising idea of the premise of a hospital under siege by aliens are totally ridiculous and unworkable in terms of the way the story works... or doesn’t work in this case. That being said though, I don’t want this fact to detract that the film is actually a great little gem of a movie which I wish I’d known about sooner. It moves along at its own rate and there’s a very British lack of emotion and acceptance inherent in the main characters but... although I suspect some people might find the lack of over emoting a trifle unsettling, I really didn’t mind it and felt kind of “at home” with the characters.

There are some truly nice compositions in the shot design, with a lot of diagonally perspective walls and hospital screens offset on either side to bring characters in to the middle area of a shot, for example, in a way that must have been really great to see on a  big screen on this film’s initial cinematic release. The acting is very good, for the most part, with no real “theatricals” from anyone... even the token human obstacle at the hospital, the one who has a terminally unfortunate accident with the force field, seems to be acting from his own viewpoint of common sense and doesn’t throw up his oppositional ideas without sound reasoning... so that’s all good.

The music is something else again. I’d not heard of the composer Bernard Ebbinghouse before but his score is not very prominent in the film for the most part and, during those parts, it’s quite effective, slightly jazzy in style and low key, in keeping with the rest of the atmosphere of the film. There was at least one moment, however, towards the end, when the music went into full overkill on something that really didn’t warrant it and it had me scratching my head as to why it was used and mixed into the foreground of the foley like this when it was blatantly inappropriate for the scene in question... which makes me wonder if the cue had been composed for that part of the movie at all or maybe just tracked in by the sound people trying to fix something else in the mix, maybe. For the most part, though, the film is very minimally spotted in terms of the music and it tends to work quite well for a lot of the time.

All in all, then, I think Invasion is a great little find and something I’d be quite happy to see on a semi-regular basis (once every five or six years)... maybe as the first half of a double bill with The Earth Dies Screaming, perhaps, which has a similar atmosphere to it, is also almost forgotten and which is even more amazing than this film. The new Network DVD is a really nice print although, much as I hate censorship (and I do, don’t get me started) I was surprised to find that a film with a shot of a photo in a... ahem... gentleman’s magazine (no, ladies, not trying to be sexist here, just talking about it in the context of the time) and a scene where blood is visible after a man has been stabbed in the gut, managed to get a PG rating. I’m not complaining and I don’t think it would do most kids any harm whatsoever... but it does seem to be a bit of a contradiction when pitched against other, more hair raising and angering decisions by the BBFC where they've sliced out or given films higher certification for far less than even this small amount of nudity and bloodshed.

Seriously though, Invasion is a real little treasure of B movie nonsense if you are into science fiction and much thanks to Network for making this available finally to, what I imagine, is a fairly unsuspecting public. Take a look at this one if you are a lover of British sci-fi and appreciate some well lit, black and white photography.

The Ship Of Monsters (La Nave De Los Monstruos)

Monster Mash

The Ship Of Monsters 

(La Nave De Los Monstruos)

Mexico 1960

Directed by Rogelio A. González

The Camden Collection Region 0

Warning: There are spoilers in here but, seriously, 

are you actually going to watch this one anyway?

I finally got around to watching this rarely seen (at least in this country) Mexican sci-fi horror B-movie from 1960 the other day in a subtitled version and all I can say is that two words will always come to mind when I think of this movie in the future. Fantastic and terrible. 

Depending how you use these two words, will determine whether you are interested in ever seeing this movie yourself, if you haven’t already done so. I would have to say that my personal arrangement of these words is not, as some might favour, to report that the film is “terribly fantastic”. Instead I have to confess, and I’m sure some of you would prefer this anyway, that the film is indeed... fantastically terrible.

So Mexican, black and white, released and probably made in 1960... to me this means it’s pretty much a 1950s movie in concept and, indeed, you couldn’t find that many better 50s B-movies which inscribe all the right check marks, if you tried, than this one does. Starting off with a prologue about “the atom” and man’s prowess (or lack of) at harnessing it (yes, 50s B-movie paranoia already in the first minute of the movie), the film then takes us straight to the matriarchy of the planet Venus. Matriarchy, in fact, because all the Venusian males on the planet have died from their own “atomic meddling”... how or why this has left a planet full of only women is not made clear. Two young ladies, Gamma and Beta are given the mission of roaming the galaxy and kidnapping the finest male specimens they can get from different planets to kickstart the Venusians back into shape with their specially devised breeding programme. You can see from the pictures of the aliens at the top of this post that the two Venusian beauties may not really be thinking quite straight... as these are the best they can come up with after the credits sequence which suddenly jumps us, after a few minutes, to the end stages of their mission. 

However... something is wrong with their 1950s cool, rockety shaped spacecraft (I’m sure I’ve seen the interior set of this in at least one of the Santo movies) and they have to land on this strange planet called Earth, so their newly acquired, noisy but extremely intelligent robot can make repairs. The two ladies step out onto the earth’s surface and then conclude that the air and atmosphere are enough like their own that it can sustain life...

What the @$%&*!

Let me just repeat that. The two ladies step out onto the earth’s surface and then conclude that the air and atmosphere are... are these gals stupid or what? A ship full of technologically advanced alien technology and instead of checking the atmosphere’s chemical composition etc... they step outside and see if they choke themselves to death to ascertain whether they can breathe in the Earth’s atmosphere or not. There’s no way these girls are going to be smart enough to succeed in their diabolical yet sexy mission! Anyway... enough of that. Cut to...

A singing cowboy, riding his horse and singing to the camera at what a misunderstood but lovable rogue he is. OMG! Within ten minutes of the movie starting, this has turned into a sci-fi western. This is brilliant. And this guy is satisfying the dual elements of hero and comic relief in this movie! This is great.

It gets greater still, when our melodious young hero bumps into the two women who get interested in him as a potential “male specimen”, ripe for their breeding programme. Obviously the cultural void left on Venus by the dearth of “singing cowboys” is something that has been weighing heavily on their minds. Maybe it’s the fact that this guy doesn’t have a giant brain sticking out of his oversize head, is not covered in stretchable fur, doesn’t have a cyclopean eye that wiggles about overactively on a stalk and isn’t, in fact, an animated animal skeleton, that makes him a more attractive proposition to the ladies in question... if their other "male specimens" are anything to go by. So later on, they go to visit our hero, Lauriano, and his kid brother and Lauriano explains to the ladies... and their big lumbering robot... the meaning of love by singing the lyrics of a bizarrely karaoke instrumental record from his juke box and, also, by giving them a kiss. Once they understand the concept of love, of course, both the Venusian girls want him for herself. Even the robot gets a bit frisky when he admires “the valves” on Lauriano’s “sexy” jukebox.

The gals go back to their ship of monsters to hasten repairs and argue about who gets to “do it” with Lauriano but somehow... and you have to believe I’m not making this up... one of the two wanders off somewhere and when the other (and don’t ask me which is which out of these sexy Italian women.. I kept getting them confused) monitors her on her unfeasibly all-seeing video screen in the ship... she discovers the other’s closely guarded secret. 

Yes, that’s right. You guessed it didn’t you? 

One of the girls is really an undercover, bloodsucking vampire from the planet Uranus. What’s that? You didn’t see that startling juxtaposition coming? Neither did I? What the heck? This movie just turned into a science fiction/western/horror movie for, as far as I can make out, absolutely no apparent reason whatsoever! 

But of course (of course... eh?) bloodsucking vampirism is illegal on Venus and so Gamma, or possibly Beta, makes the other her prisoner so she can execute her later before getting back to the business in hand. However, our fanged and flying vampire escapes and captures the other. She then frees the alien monsters and strikes a deal with them to destroy the earth... promising to marry the big headed geezah with the brains that spill out decoratively from the top of his head. Some of the dialogue in this movie, if not all, is absolutely hilarious.

After all this happens, it’s a matter of intrigue and adventure as the loving Venusian who wants to marry Lauriano is rescued by him. After this, Lauriano manages to distract the Vampire lady, who wants him too, by singing at her and dancing until she is distracted enough to allow him to steal the robot control unit and the tables are turned. This is followed by a massive chase and punch up with all the principle cast until the aliens and vampire are vanquished and the true message of love is broadcast to the doomed female population of Venus. The robot, alone, returns to Venus... accompanied by Lauriano’s juke box, who dances and sings a song with him. True mechanical love is found!

This movie is, frankly, nuts and I enjoyed every minute of it. There is even some not too subtle dig at a famous Italian star of the time. Lauriano has a cow who he says bad things about and who he has named Lollabrigida. ‘nuff said.

There’s also some great special effects amidst the truly terrible ones. The aliens are laughable but the prosthetics on them, such as the cyclops’ overactive eye-on-a-stalk, are really quite good. The furry creature's stretching (like Mr. Fantastic) arms work surprisingly well (better than in Corman’s version of The Fantastic Four, reviewed here, that’s for sure) and the animation in the fight scenes of the animal skeleton creature is truly amazing. You won’t see any operators or strings here!

All in all, then, it’s an absolutely terrible sci-fi/western/horror mash up which has so much tackiness and fun in it that I couldn’t help but be absolutely charmed by it. I’m pretty sure the robot and aliens in this one probably turned up in other movies... either before or after... but I don’t know which ones. If you’re a fan of the absolute tackiest of 1950s and 1960s “atomic age” B-movies though, then you’re in for a treat. Try and get a hold of this one... it’s worth it’s weight in valves.

Prometheus

Top row: Prometheus promotional posters.  Bottom row: Splash panel from the original Heavy Metal comic album of ALIEN (left) and the discovery of the "original" spcae jockey in Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (right).





The Girl With The Alien Tattoo


Prometheus USA  2012
Directed by Sir Ridley Scott
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: Yeah, there are marginal spoilers in here.

Hmmm... this really is going to be a bit of a mixed bag of a review, methinks.

Before going into this properly, though, it’s probably useful to you to know how I feel about the six previous ALIEN movies so you can gauge how I compare to your own opinions of these films and judge this review on that basis.

I never got to see the first ALIEN film at the cinema in 1979, the year it came out (although I certainly made up for that years later). I was too young at 11 years old to successfully sneak into an X certificate movie... so I had to stay with my nan while my parents went out for a very rare cinema trip to see it. They came back with glowing reports which further fuelled my desire to see it. I did however have the Heavy Metal comics adaptation of the movie to read (plus the making of book) and, believe me, that comic strip was far more vivid and violent than the on-screen counterpart. When I did get to see the movie just a few years later, the chest burster scene seemed extremely tame to my teenage brain and I wondered what all the fuss was about in terms of any violent content, considering the version depicted in said comic book was an absolute gore-fest! And since comic strip adaptations of films are often done from the scripts while the movie is still being shot, it also included scenes in it which I wouldn’t see on screen until they started to put deleted scenes on videos and DVD (Sir Ridley brought out his “new” cut of the movie with these sequences put back in but to the detriment of the movie since he also took out a load of stuff to speed up the action for... well... for the MTV generation). When I did see it, of course, although it was a lot tamer than I could have possibly imagined, it easily became on of my favourite sci-fi movies. The “atmosphere of the everyday” that Scott had created in meticulous detail was worth the price of admission alone. And of course, H. R. Giger’s designs and Goldsmith’s score were the cherry and icing on the biomechanical cake.

When ALIENS arrived at cinemas in 1986, we were all geared up for it and it kinda worked because it wasn’t trying to imitate the atmosphere of the original movie. Now, I have to go on record here that I found Cameron’s entry in the series to be the weakest of the four solo outings of the ALIEN species... but I don’t mean to say it’s not a good entry. It is. All the initial solo ALIEN movies are quality products and it’s a shame that Cameron had to cut this one down for its initial release as the scenes he added back later lost their impact due to knowledge of the way the scenes were going to play out. It’s a marvellous film, easily Cameron’s masterpiece... just the weakest of the initial four. Lifted quite a lot by James Horner’s score... back in the day when everybody my age thought he was an original and “the new hope” of the soundtrack composing community... as opposed to what he’s revealed himself to be over the years.

When Alien 3 (or Alien Cubed as it quickly became known) was released, there seemed to be a big backlash against the movie... although a lot of people, myself included, really loved the finished product. Sure it has big problems, not least of which is a completely redesigned “dog” version of the ALIEN which doesn’t match up to any of the “man in suit” close up shots. This is a film where communication with the second unit and effects guys seems to have gotten the better of Fincher... but still, the rich gothic atmosphere supported and enhanced by Goldenthal’s absolutely superb pseudo-religious scoring is everything in this movie and lifts it to the heavens despite its flawed nature. It also features the death of the main character of the initial series, Ellen Ripley, who sacrifices her life to kill the creature as it jumps from her chest... bit of a dramatic ending on this one.

And then we have the celebrated French director Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection, in which Ripley returns as a superpowered Alien-hybrid clone of herself and much continental quirkiness is afoot. Good movie, very bad, flawed new ALIEN design for the ending which, it has to be said, looks more like Casper The Friendly Ghost than something which is supposedly the spawn of something created by Giger (and I don’t think Giger was anywhere near this production, so that kinda explains it). Still, I liked this movie a lot (obviously better than Cameron’s entry) and John Frizzel’s score, which is almost like John Barry filtered through the ALIEN universe style, was another good piece of scoring. I was just waiting for the studio to follow this movie up with The Adventures Of Ripley-clone on Earth!

However, rather than continue the series in this manner, the studio decided to go the way of the Universal Pictures monster rallies of the 1940s (a sure sign that studios have lost faith in the ability of their solo characters to pull in crowds on their own) by making a “double sequel” movie to both the Alien and Predator franchises. AVP: Alien Vs Predator is actually quite a fun film (and certainly my favourite of the lamentable Predator movies) but seriously screws up continuity with the series. I can just about justify the Aliens appearing on Earth hundreds of years before they’re discovered in the future, for example, because their appearance then could have been the reason why the shadowy Weyland-Yutani corporation had an interest in pursuing them in the future, but the fact that they killed off Lance Henrikson in the present day, when we already know he turns up as exactly the same “real life” version of the character at the end of Alien 3, is a real clunker and I don’t understand why they allowed this to happen. The movie is quite fun and watchable though, supported by a competent score which doesn’t really let the side down... which doesn’t make what happened next any less of a bitter pill to swallow...

What happened next was the incredibly awful Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem which was not just the worst ALIEN or Predator movie in the collective franchises... it was also a bad film in general. This movie manages to take the classic ALIEN creatures and dilute them down to nothing by putting them slap bang in the middle of what seems to be a teen-slasher movie. Seriously, the ALIEN is nothing more than a roving serial killer to bring out all the tired old genre tropes which kiddie audiences seem to be so comfortable with. A truly dreadful end to the series and a true insult to Giger and Scott’s original creation... it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The only good thing about it was up and coming composer Brian Tyler’s exemplary score, which was way more than the visuals he was given to work with deserved.

So now you know how I feel about the last six movies in the franchise, I suppose I’d better get on with reviewing the prequel, I guess.

If you’re on the same wavelength as me, you’ll probably twig that I hold Scott’s initial ALIEN (especially in its original cut) up as being the absolute best in the series... that much hasn’t changed after seeing Prometheus, I’m afraid. Scott goes back to the original “scene of the crime” of his first film by having a team of Earth archeologists, looking for the origins of man, finding the original “space jockey” ship... plus some biological weapons they were creating, plus a space jockey himself who is not the peaceful saviour that the central protagonists had hoped him to be.

The film starts off with one of these aliens (who look like an old bald headed humanoid from one of the earliest episodes of the original Star Trek) taking some kind of biochemical cocktail which destroys his DNA (in a “penetrating” close up shot that Dario Argento will just love when he sees it as it could almost have been lifted from one of his films) and disintegrates him into a big river... I think this must be what brings these specific aliens their initial downfall, but I’m just guessing as it’s really not made implicit in the film. The first thing I thought when watching this first scene though was... What is this? Star Trek 5?

I thought both this sequence and the next one, where the team of Archaeologists in Scotland fronted by Doctor Elizabeth Shaw (Any Pertwee era Doctor Who fans here guess why I was pulled out of the movie when I first heard this character name?), as played by the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace, find another artefact depicting a specific star map where the human race is supposed to go ... were quite pedestrian in the way they’d been handled and not what I’d expect from a director with Sir Ridley’s usually impeccable visual taste. Also, although this plot point makes a great hook, it seems to be unlikely that the “space jockeys” have, as yet, visited Earth (if I’m interpreting the story correctly), so what the "buggery-F" these little constellation maps dotted throughout human history are having any business being here is anybody’s guess... again, it doesn’t seem to have been made implicit in the final cut of the movie.

Okay, so I had problems with the first ten minutes but from here on in the film was a flawed but thoroughly interesting ride. Scott’s rich visual style resurfaces after the first ten minutes or so and we’re treated to an absolutely beautiful sequence where the android Dave is alone on the ship (watching over the crew in suspended animation) and it’s very reminiscent (and almost equally as strong) as Kubrik’s sequence of another famous “sci-fi” Dave watching over a crew in suspended animation in 2001: A Space Odyssey... Fassbinder is excellent in it and so is Peter O’Toole... I’ll not elabourate if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Go see it for yourself.

When the crew awake and go to the planet, the horror/sci-fi movie starts proper and there are thrill and spills and an almost unbearable tension as Sir Ridley stretches out the suspense... you know something bad is going to happen... and he knows you know, so he’s obviously going to play to that. He does it very well and you cant fault him for delivering a very entertaining “screen excitement” as they used to say back in the day. Visually rich, brilliant performances all round and a definite recommendation of a night out at the cinema from me...

However...

It’s a bit of a flawed masterpiece in my opinion and I know that will probably rub some people up the wrong way. If you’re doing comparisons to the original ALIEN, for example, the acting is strong but the original had relative unknowns and Prometheus is filled with famous actors. It tries to be an ensemble piece but, even though it’s filled with big names... in addition to Fassbender and Rapace there are Idris Elba, Guy Pierce and Charlize Theron (I was a bit upset her character name wasn’t ALIEN Wuornos to be honest) who are also in the mix... Fassbender and Rapace’s characters definitely dominated the show here. It was very much their movie and they seemed to be the characters showcased more than the others... although, as I said before, all the performances were exemplary.

Another problem I had with it was the tone. There were some sequences of the movie, especially those involving Idris Elba, which could have been wrenched directly from the first film in in terms of the almost haphazard, naturalistic, “caught moments” way they had been shot. Just like a proper 70s movie! But these were juxtaposed and cross cut with more set piece motivated sequences, much less reminiscent of that style. It just about kind of worked but I felt it diluted the power of a lot of those shots and I would have liked it to be more like the shooting style of the original ALIEN all the way through... but that’s just a personal preference I guess.

The other thing was... well look. The way I described it to a friend was this...

“The first ten minutes of the movie are rubbish... as are the last twenty minutes or so. All the stuff between this is really excellent.”

And that’s how I feel. I’ve explained my reaction to the first ten minutes but the reason I didn’t think much of the last twenty was because... well... there’s an absolutely brilliant stand out scene where Noomi Rapace is in a small medical container with a “creature”. I don’t want to give away too much about what happens in this scene, other than to say that it is a) incredible in it’s execution and suspense and b) something you wouldn’t expect one of the characters involved to recover from... let alone run around doing run, jump, survive and get half beaten up scenes when the character is obviously in such a frail state. Dr. Liz Shaw, I don’t care how pumped full of futuristic space drugs you are... I don’t buy you, as a human being, being able to handle anything else that happens after this point in this movie. It just stretches the credibility too much and it was at this moment I failed to hold my “suspension of disbelief” for Scott. The rest of the movie, though nice to look at, stopped packing any punch for me and I was disappointed... especially at the tagged on, final revelation where baby royalty makes her first appearance (years in our future, thus rendering the Alien/Predator films even less a part of the same series). Talking of which... didn’t the crew of the Nostromo in ALIEN find the original “space jockey” in the chair with its ribs exploded outwards to indicate a chest burster had gotten to it... have a think about that when you go and see this movie. Did Sir Ridley even watch his original film again before rolling cameras on this one?

The film has a fifteen rating but I think it could have gotten away with a 12A. There’s very little, if any, blood in this movie and there’s certainly nothing as frightening or strong as the scenes that play out in Scott’s original masterpiece. There’s a lot of suspense in it and he really knows how to ratchet up the tension (his suspense dial goes up to eleven)... but when the denouement of each of each of these set pieces come, they seem to be somewhat underwhelming, I thought, and in the end I concluded that the movie was something considerably less than it’s glittery, shining parts.

Also, Scott came under a lot of flack after the first one for a lot of it being a kind of reworking of Mario Bava’s Planet Of The Vampires, so I thought he’d have avoided any obvious material for comparison this time around. Not so. Maybe his writers were working against him a little on this but fans of Bava’s original will certainly enjoy the, even more, blatant references in this one. I won’t give too much away but lets just say that the aliens in both movies share a musical interest.

Talking about music... the score sounds good in places and rather humdrum in others. I’d need to hear it away from the movie to make a proper judgement on it but I must say I wasn’t best amused when one of Jerry Goldsmith’s original themes for the series was subverted and used to recreate it as as a new leitmotif signature of the Weyland-Yutani company. Not worth doing, either, in my opinion.

All in all, though, a really nice looking movie... but I think it was a mistake trying to tie this into the original ALIEN franchise in general... and when I say mistake I mean a cold-blooded bid for money off the back of the old series by the suits at Fox... that’s what I mean. Not that I can blame Scott and co for going for the cash... just wish they’d have left it alone and introduced an entirely new set of creature (which in some ways they kinda did I suppose, in a Cthulhuesque kind of way). Certainly worth some of your time and money because it’s quite astonishing to look at in places (the projected, running “space jockeys” are particularly unnerving) but don’t go in their expecting something as cool as ALIEN... if you do you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Doctor Who: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

It’s In The Trees! It’s coming...

Doctor Who: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

Airdate: December 25th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Little spoilers which will grow on you and turn into bigger spoilers as you follow them through the word forest of this review...

Oh good grief. You know, whenever I don’t like a movie or a show I find it much easier to find enough things to say about it (read “complain about it” methinks) to turn it into a sizeable article. So fair warning up front kiddies... this is going to be one short review!

Okay... so I was fairly easy on last years Christmas special (compared to most of the comments I was getting back about it from friends and family) but I did acknowledge that, while it wasn’t the worst one they’d done... it certainly was in that same league of some of the more dissapointing episodes. Now I don’t get the time or opportunity on Christmas Day to watch Doctor Who but I usually end up watching it with the family on Boxing Day.

So, post-party last night, I trod fairly tentatively on Twitter expecting the usual round of Doctor Who spoilers and was susrprised that nobody had found anything passionate or interesting to say about it. In fact, once the episode had started, I couldn’t find any comments about that eposode at all, even after it had finished. This was somewhat unusual and from what I would guess is... it wasn’t that well liked.

This suspicion was further compounded when I rang a friend who had seen it this morning and he reported back to me that... it was “alright” but not great and it made a mockery of its own timelines somewhat. Okay then, thought I, I can handle another bad Doctor Who episode at Christmas... after all, I figured... I had survived watching all the episodes of Torchwood: Miracle Day without actually causing myself physical harm to distract me from the pain of bad scripting... and Doctor Who should at least have some good scoring on it to distract me. So I inevitably took the plunge today and watched The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe... and here’s what I thought of it.

Well... I must say, that was a really brilliant and heartwarming episode which was everything like a Christmas special should be. It was solidly written, had some good performances and was really nicely lit... most of it seemed to have been lit or designed with blue (TARDIS blue?) in mind which is not usually a good look when pitching against flesh tones but, hey, it worked really well here I thought (although you wouldn't be able to tell from the images above).

The Doctor was without his regular companions until the last couple of minutes and this worked in Matt Smith’s favour as he didn’t have the distraction of the red-headed firebrand who is Amy Pond to draw the eye away from The Doctor. Matt Smith is an absolutely brilliant actor and without Amy around The Doctor takes full command of the screen.

The story starts during the Second World War as one of the lead characters is “widowed” by the seeming death of her husband... although it has to be said that, because you don’t actually see his final fate, you don’t actually believe he’s dead and the story does kind of tip its hat at that point I’m afraid... still, knowing how it’s all going to end right from the start has never hurt these stories much before and, as anything, it’s about the journey of getting to that conclusion that counts. This journey is mostly set in a forest of the future on one of the two Androzani planets featured in Peter Davison’s final story as The Fifth Doctor, The Caves Of Androzani. I don’t want to spoil too much of what happens but there are references to Narnia and Tolkien and some nice comical work featuring Bill Bailey as the Captain of a “military unit” which all make watching this one a treat.

The timeline isn’t actually screwed up in this one (which makes a change)... and makes perfect sense when the final fate of the World War 2 pilot is revealed. This does, of course, make the title of the piece something of a misnomer... but let’s be charitable. It’s all for the sake of a cheap parody of an episode title and... it is Christmas after all.

My only real grumble with this one is when Murray Gold’s score (partially new and partially tracked in from pieces written for previous episodes... as is the standard practice for modern Doctor Who scoring, it seems) had what sounded very much like a two second musical sting from one of the first two ALIEN movies tracked in to highlight a jump when The Doctor and one of his Christmas companions start their walk in the forest. I don’t know if it was an original Jerry Goldsmith sting from ALIEN or one of Jimmy Horner’s “carbon copies” from ALIENS... but it did pop me out of the story somewhat, hearing a familiar piece of scoring (like all those old cues from the show always do) and I wondered why they actually needed that specific sting in there rather than one written by the always excellent Mr. Gold. Perhaps it was to musically highlight an ALIEN reference that I just didn’t get... but somehow I don’t think so.

Either way, musical anomolies aside, this has got to be one of the best Christmas specials since... well, since The Next Doctor and it’s definitely one I look forward to watching this time next year when the, hopefully reoccurring DVD set of the next series, is released. Talking of which... just what is happening with the next series? There was no trailer for one like in recent years. Do we get one next year or not? About time Auntie Beeb made an announcement, don’t you think?