Stranger Things 4

Ex-stranging
The Experience

Stranger Things 4
USA May - July 2022
Nine episodes

Warning: Some spoilers running right up that hill at you.

Okay, it has to be said that series four of hit show Stranger Things was a little bit hit and miss for me. I didn’t like it as much as the second and third series, for sure but, I still liked it a lot better than the first. That being said, there’s lots of good stuff within it too so... let’s take a little look.

Okay, plot...  it’s Spring Break and various characters are reunited, after the close of the last season meant that some of them had to move away from the sleepy town of Hawkins. Something, though, is killing high school kids in Hawkins, making them see dark visions for a week or so in advance... before levitating them into the air, breaking their bones and then sucking their eyeballs back into their head. However, as with other seasons, the plot strands are split both globally and in terms of character threads, into three or four different groups, which merge and then diverge over the series. You have one lot trying to figure out what’s going on with the bizarre murders that look very much like they come from the Upside Down (the physical manifestation of the alternate, dark version of Hawkins where all the dark things dwell), you have Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) being retrained (through ordeal) to recover her superpowers by both Mathew Modine and Paul Reiser, themselves pursued by an army splinter group, because they believe Eleven is the only way to stop what is coming to Hawkins. You also have three of the kids trying to recover Eleven (along with new stoner character Argyle) and we have Joyce (Winona Ryder) finding out that Hopper (David Harbour) may still be alive after the events of the last series finale but, needs assistance to help break him out of a Russian security prison in Alaska. And, of course, the series concludes with all the characters reuniting but, things go a little differently this time around.

Okay, so lots to like here. The playing of a Dungeons And Dragons game crosscut with a basketball game is pretty well done. There’s a nod to the famous real life Hellfire Club (although mostly just in the name used for a D&D group) and, being as it’s set in 1986, the usual pop culture artefacts such as an Elvira poster, a Halloween mask and, in a series of moments which surprised everyone in terms of the spin off benefits... using the Kate Bush song Running Up That Hill as Max’s (Sadie Sink) favourite song, used to save her life and pull her away from the clutches of the creature at one point midway through the season, resulting in it being number one in the world charts for weeks (and still counting at time of writing). I remember when this song came out in 1985... it turned me on to Kate Bush big time and within the space of about six weeks I’d saved up enough money to purchase all of her albums, of which there were then five in total. Of course, in those days they were vinyl albums but they were certainly among the first non-soundtrack titles I upgraded to CD when the format was introduced.

Another great pop culture moment is when the kids are trying to find a drug supplier by only his first name. The two who work in a video store run it into their computer and narrow it down to about seven people in the area before checking the rental records... when they find the one who keeps renting out all the Cheech And Chong videos, they know they’ve got their man. And Dustin quoting Han Solo in normal conversation (Never tell me the odds!) was a nice touch. Not to mention the casting of Freddy himself, Robert Englund (from the Nightmare On Elm Street films... which don’t really appeal to me, I remember him best in V), as a key character in one episode.

Another thing I liked about the show was that the main villain turns out to be someone from Eleven’s past (she’s repressed the memory for so long) and, not only that, it turns out he’s the prime mover for the villains in all three previous seasons. I also liked that, although it seems for a little while that the day has been saved by the usual suspects... there’s one important character left in a coma and, as the Upside Down has ruptured Hawkins in various multidimensional rifts... well, it starts snowing that kind of ash that is in the air in the Upside Down... it’s clear the kids aren’t out of the woods yet...

Although I really thought they would be because, well, I was under the impression that the fourth series was the final one for the show but, no, it turns out that there’s going to be a fifth and final season at some point and, all I will say about that is, they’d better get their skates on. Those kids are growing up fast and when you compare them to flashback footage from previous iterations, it’s really noticeable. The other thing about that is... usually a year has gone by with each new show but... I just don’t see how they’re going to be able to pick up the storyline again without carrying on from exactly where they left it this time around. Which makes getting it in the can even more urgent, I would have thought.

Talking about the music though... there’s a thing about the needle drop of pre-existing tracks that I really didn’t like. Namely the way they’ve been cut up and looped about. For example, would it have killed them to cut the big Kate Bush scene (out of the many in the show using that song) to the actual track as it exists rather than keep chopping it about like that? And in one long scene where the villain is monologuing for quite a while, the music seems to start off with the last track from Philip Glass’ Koyaanisqatsi score before, bizarrely, jumping into his opera Akhnaten midway through. Not quite sure what’s going on there.

All in all, though, like I said, I still appreciated Stranger Things 4 more than the first season and I have the two volumes of score CD (not the stupid song compilations) on pre-order (which at two discs each makes it the most music we’ve had from a season in one hit). So if you liked the other three seasons you should probably be okay with this one. I’m kind of hoping that Season 5 will be a marked improvement though... and I hope they continue to bring Kate Bush along for the ride.

Dracula (1931)

Tod Browning’s Ghoul Days

Dracula
USA 1931
Directed by Tod Browning
Original and also rescored version.

Dracula (Spanish audience version)
USA 1931
Directed by George Melford & Enrique Tovar Ávalos
Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, it's about time I got around to writing about my beloved Universal Horror films for this site. The time seems about right what with Universal launching their shared universe movies which they have rechristened their Dark Universe franchise, albeit with a somewhat shaky start with their new version of The Mummy (reviewed here). Of course, their intended first film in this series was Dracula Untold (reviewed by me soon on this very blog) but the box office on that film meant that it was pretty much a false start for them, though it would be very easy to add the Dracula character from that production into the 'modern times' mix, given the last scenes in that film.

Of course, it's pretty obvious with these first, recent attempts at stand alone movies that the company is wanting to cash in on what I shall call the ‘Marvel Effect’ in terms of box office. The teaming up of established cinematic characters to grab a large, almost unhealthy dose of box office cash. They're certainly not the only company to be doing this (DC's Justice League will be with us in November) but of all the companies going for the gold in this manner at the moment... and this is something I've said before in an earlier review... it’s Universal who can perhaps be forgiven for jumping on the multiple monster bandwagon when you take into account that they already started doing this in the early 1940s (although not, interestingly, with their established Mummy character).

And, though this cross pollinating idea doesn't quite start with their 1931 production of Dracula (pretty much the first horror talkie and a big influence on the output of their competitors at the time)... it actually kinda does, in a way. The monster rallies to come just over a decade later were very much incorporating this character in their cinematic DNA. This marks pretty much the first 'official' version of Dracula on screen... not including the very famous, unauthorised German Expressionist classic Nosferatu, which Bram Stoker’s widow had won a legal case against and for which all the prints were supposed to have been destroyed as a consequence of this legal action (fortunately for us, a couple survived).

The film itself is not based on Stoker's novel as such... and neither are very many of the film versions of it either, it has to be said. Instead it is based on his somewhat simplified stage version which he wrote for his boss Henry Irving. I say “somewhat” because it was filtered through a couple of other writer's versions before it was adapted for Universal... the Hamilton Dean version and the John L. Balderstone version, which he subsequently revised for the screenplay here.

The casting was always supposed to be very different. Various actors had been bandied about for the role until the dream team of director Tod Browning and "man of a thousand faces" Lon Chaney as Dracula were signed. Unfortunately, Chaney died of cancer before the production was due to start shooting and, when there was no one left to cast, Universal snapped up Bela Lugosi... who was really lobbying for the part... for an insultingly small salary. We are fortunate that they chose him though (eventually), because he knew exactly what he was doing with the role since he'd been playing the Count to good reviews in the Balderstone play for an astonishingly large number of performances and, indeed, was instrumental to Universal in acquiring the film rights to the play from Mrs. Stoker in the first place.

Joining him from the phenomenally long run of the stage play were Herbert Bunston as Dr. Seward and the inimitable Edward Van Sloan as Dracula's famous nemesis Van Helsing (easily my favourite screen rendition of Van Helsing and I couldn't imagine this film without his amazing presence as much as I couldn't imagine it without Lugosi's Dracula). Like Lugosi, Van Sloane would play his character for a second outing but, whereas Lugosi had to wait until 1949's Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein before he had another crack at his most famous role, Van Sloan would reprise his role of Van Helsing in the first direct sequel to Dracula, the 1936 film Dracula's Daughter. That being said, Van Sloan also turns up in Frankenstein in the same year as this movie and also has a very similar, 'Van Helsingish' role in the 1932 production of The Mummy.

Rounding out the most important members of the cast were Helen Chandler as Mina, Frances Dade as Lucy, David Manners as Jonathan Harker and the absolutely fantastic Dwight Frye as everyone's favourite fly eater, Renfield. Frye's dialogue delivery in this, like that of Lugosi and Van Helsing's, seems almost deliberately slow and stilted, even considering talking pictures had only been going for two years (a silent, intertitled version of Dracula was also released for theatres that hadn't yet had audio equipment put in). This might put off some modern viewers to a certain extent but, if you can get used to the line delivery, it makes for a very rewarding viewing experience totally appropriate to the subject matter and it’s worth giving it a second look to if you couldn't get into it the first time around.

Considering it's the first talking vampire picture (with the lead vampire in question being a very different 'beast' from Stoker's disgusting old man of the novel who was closer, perhaps, to the Nosferatu version of the character) the film never shows the vampires possessing the fangs they are now known for and it never once, in this version shot for English speaking audiences where censorship restrictions were a little more rigid, shows the double puncture marks left in the vampire's victims... although it does, at least, describe them in the dialogue so the audience can get the idea.

There is, of course, no music in this save for the opening titles and the diegetic music (source music from on screen instruments) due to the belief in this period that it would distract from the dialogue. It wasn't until Max Steiner's score for King Kong in 1933 that producers realised the power of the film score in regards to talking pictures (please see my review of King Kong here for the 'strings attached' part of that statement). This, coupled with the unusually pronounced dialogue gives the film a certain eerie quality which it might not otherwise have (and I'll say a little more about 'underscore' in regards to this motion picture in a little while).

In terms of the richness of the visual design of the film, this version has always been viewed as second best when compared to the Spanish language edition shot with a different cast and crew on the same sets and with the same shooting script, through night time shoots when the first production had gone home for the day. I used to adhere to this opinion too but, looking at the two films side by side now, I think they are just very different and the Browning version, shot by cinematographer Karl Freund, is every bit as rich at a visual level, if not more so in some places. I'll get around to talking a bit more about the simultaneously shot Spanish version in a little while.

There's not as much moving camera as in the Spanish version here (as was typical for sound film at this period, the camera was still learning how to be free again and mask the equipment noise) but even where there is fluid camera movement, the Browning version will often cut to a more staged, not quite matching close up version of a character (often Lugosi himself) in much the same way that Sergei Eisenstein used to single out static shots of a character rather than zoom in on them in films such as his classic Battleship Potemkin.

There are many little visual gems in this movie and here are a few of them that I noticed on this viewing:

There's a wonderful scene in the early stages of the film where Dwight Frye's Renfield is standing framed in front of some full length windows in roughly the centre of the screen with his back to us as he looks out. This is intercut with a shot of 'the brides of Dracula' framed in a big open doorway directly opposite that position, echoing the shots both proceeding and succeeding it.

Later on, as Renfield is seen in the hold of the good ship Vesta (actually the Demeter in Stoker's original novel), there is a kind of slightly moving spotlight in the background to give dramatic lighting as he speaks to Dracula in his coffin/crate. This is clearly meant to be the light shining through from an unseen porthole magnified onto the background and utilised for stylistic effect.

There's a particularly beautiful composition in Lucy's bedroom where Lucy and Mina, who is some distance behind Lucy, are sitting in front of a large mirror. In the reverse shot we see Lucy sitting on the left with her back to us, her reflection facing us in the mirror as she talks, slightly taller because of the angle and distance captured in the mirror... and then Mina's relection a little higher still facing us, again due to distance and angle from the reflecting glass. The three bodies in space make an upward diagonal line from left to right, framed by two lamps on either side of the upward frames of the mirror. It’s a pretty amazing composition, as it goes.

In addition to some startling visual designs, there's also the odd moment or two when the editing is just as poetic. My favourite example would be a scene when the main characters are discussing what could have made the two puncture marks on Mina's neck. One of them says, "What could have caused them, Professor?" Suddenly the housekeeper exclaims "Count Dracula!" as if in response to the question but, in actual fact, she's announcing Dracula’s arrival at the house and Lugosi enters in the next shot. It's a nice little touch and it's just these little, electrically charged juxtapositions of interacting elements that make films worth watching in the first place.

The 1998 re-release of the film with a specifically commissioned score composed by Philip Glass is not my preferred choice of viewing, although I have long been an admirer of the music of Glass and, if nothing else, this version serves to illustrate the benefits that having a score can bring to a movie. For instance, the soundtrack detracts greatly from the stilted feel of the dialogue and makes it maybe a little more palatable for audiences not used to such a degree of aural stylisation. Also, the leitmotif quality of the orchestral textures (rather than the melodies, in this instance), clue the audience in to things which the non-scored film was arguably lacking.

As an example of this, there's the shadow of an unrevealed character on a wall intercut in one scene a little before he enters and it’s revealed to be Renfield when he walks on but I don't really think the intention of this shot was to surprise or wrong foot the audience in any way. I suspect it was literally just an insert shot to clue the viewer in to the fact that Renfield has been listening in for a while. The addition of Glass' score makes it a little more implicit that it's Renfield's silhouette because the 'plucking' style of the orchestration which the viewer will have subconsciously associated with the character is used when it appears. This is exactly the kind of thing music in film is good at and Glass demonstrates it very well here.

When I first saw the score performed live against the screen it was in the same orchestration used here, performed as then by the much celebrated Kronos Quartet. However, when I saw it performed a few years later it was reorchestrated for four different instruments (not just strings) and I remember thinking it was a far superior version of Glass' score than the original one issued for home video and on CD. Alas, I've never been able to track down a recording of that version of the Glass Dracula score.

Okay, so the Spanish version, although using the same sets as the English language version, is very differently shot and staged... in some places it's far superior and in others... not so much. It also includes a scene or two not present in the other but, by a similar token, has other key scenes missing. Of the cast of this version, which still uses footage of Lugosi for some long shots to save money, the only three actors really worth looking at are Carlos Villarías as the Count himself, Lupita Tova as Eva (aka Mina) and Pablo Álvarez Ribio as a Renfield who certainly gives Dwight Frye a run for his money but in a much different style (and really, nobody does it better than Frye). The Spanish version of Van Helsing, for example, doesn't possess the same electrical presence as Van Sloane's delivery of the same role, who's stern visual style with the harsh, blonde widow's peak and the thick, milk bottle glasses adds another level of weight to the role which makes his Spanish counterpart seem a much softer, less satisfying variation of the character.

There are a great many differences, far too numerous to mention in an article of this size, in the Spanish movie. Indeed, apart from the same sets and mostly similar dialogue, it's like watching a completely different movie which, in fairness, it is. However, I'll highlight a few of the more interesting comparisons I’ve noticed next.

In the US version you never really see Lugosi rising from his coffin. Instead, the camera moves away and it's implied that’s what’s happened before it either returns or cuts back to a shot of Lugosi standing next to said coffin. Presumably the sight of Dracula groping his way out of his coffin in shot and messing up his immaculate cape was not seen as a desirable element of the film. I can see that. However, all the 'coffin release' shots of the Spanish version are a lot more interestingly handled. Here you see the, usually already half risen, lid of the coffin opening with a mist floating up from within. Then, when the lid is fully raised, Carlos Villarías pops up from behind the coffin lid (which presumably puts no strain on his cloak) and there you have it. Job done and it's much more effective than the English language version in this respect.

There's also much more made of the supernatural manipulation of objects, such as the self opening and closing doors which gave Dwight Frye so much concern in Castle Dracula. In the Spanish version, even the doors on the second coach that carries Renfield to his Transylvanian rendezvous open and close at will with a disturbingly loud groaning. Similarly, there is more emphasis on the title character flying into people’s rooms as a bat before changing into human form. Although you still don’t see the actual transformation, it’s much more heavily reinforced as an idea whereas, in the other one, you may be forgiven for thinking this is not really covered all that well at all.

In the scene where, in the US version, the brides of Dracula go to attack the feinted Renfield but are waved back by Dracula so he can claim him for himself (in a strangely homoerotic subtext found within the trappings of the vampire genre quite often), the Spanish version shows the brides themselves going down to 'vamp Renfield up'.

The differences continue but, some of them are quite odd.

A little more is made of the implied violence as Dracula eats his way through the crew of the Vesta while he journeys to London. However, these sequences include a little less dialogue from Renfield but include a quite incredible, memorable shot of him laughing his head off maniacally as he is framed by the circle of a porthole. A quite menacingly disconcerting shot, as it happens.

That being said, the following scene of Dracula murdering/drinking the Covent Garden flower girl is completely absent from the Spanish version, which is kind of strange. It says a lot about the difference in pacing of more or less the same scenes in the two versions when you consider that the Spanish edition is a full half an hour longer than the US counterpart. However, although the implied violence of this scene has been left out entirely in this version, the twin puncture wounds in the necks of the victims in this are very much a visual presence whereas, as I stated earlier, they were absent in all but dialogue references in the US version. Of course, the costumes on the ladies in question are a lot more racier and low cut than in the US movie so their necks are pretty easily visible all the time (not to mention other bosomy details which their almost transparent attire reveals in certain scenes).

That being said, the scene in Lucy’s bedroom which still does technically take place in a mirror is, while less static, a much more mundane affair in this Spanish version and doesn’t match the visual poetry created in the counterpart scene in Tod Browning’s daytime shoot. Neither is the scene where Renfield crawling across the floor to the unconscious maid as interesting as the version performed by Dwight Frye, which is more dementedly focused as he comes from the back of the shot to the front, rather than what Renfield does in the Spanish version, which just has him crawling in from the right hand side of the frame.

There also seems to be an incredible amount of expository dialogue coming from Van Helsing’s character towards the end of the picture. Much more than the English language version. This is not really a good thing although the ‘hypnotic confrontation’ scene between Van Helsing and Dracula seems a little more elabourate and is intercut with the scene where 'vamped up Eva' is trying to bite Jonathan Harker (or Juan Harker as he is known in this one) and get him to take Van Helsing’s crucifix away from him. Both scenes play out as single scenes in the US daytime shoot version. Likewise, the scene where Van Helsing confronts Dracula with the reflecting box has a much more embellished reaction on the Spanish version of the Count. Bela Lugosi is content to knock the cigarette box out of Van Helsing’s hand but Carlos Villarías uses his cane to smash the box from Van Helsing’s hands here.

Another highlight of the different places the directors took their respective versions to includes the final death scene of Renfield. In the Browning version, he is silently strangled to death and then rolls down the big, circular staircase (which would be reused again in films like Frankenstein) to drop off the last bit out of sight behind a chest. In this version, Renfield is screaming as he is half choked to death before being tossed off the same stairs from the top. He’s also not forgotten by Van Helsing as the movie closes, either... his body is still very much visible and the focus of the Professor's attention in the last moments of the film.

A very important difference, to my mind, would be a scene in the Spanish version which follows the story in which we are treated to a conversation between Van Helsing and Juan that makes it quite clear that the former has driven a stake through the resurrected Lucy’s heart. In the US version, her menacing figure is left undealt with by our heroes. So that’s very interesting because one imagines that these scenes were in the script to be filmed by the other crew... they just chose to omit them, for some reason.

The ‘new’ Universal Legacy Dracula Blu Ray collection contains almost all of the extras from the similarly titled US DVD release of over a decade ago. The films look as spectacular as ever and, in the case of Dracula, have a lot of supporting material including film and Universal Horror historian David J. Skaal’s commentary track for the US version, the alternate Glass soundtrack and the Spanish version of the film... although this last item is as annoying as the previously mentioned set as, if your Blu Ray played doesn’t have a subtitle toggle, there are a lot of shenanigans to be performed to get the English subs up for this. It also doesn’t help that, if you pause it for five minutes and the disc’s screensaver kicks in, it resets the default to stop playing the subtitles when you resume. So that’s not good. However, it is a lovely set with these films looking pretty much better than they ever did before. If you’ve never seen the first authorised versions of Dracula before then this Blu Ray set is a great place to start. Not all the films in the interpenetrating sequence are there (you’ll need the Frankenstein and The Wolfman legacy sets for that) but these are relatively inexpensive sets for the amount of content on them and, unlike the previous Universal Legacy versions, also include Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (and Abbot and Costello Meet The Mummy on the The Mummy legacy set). It’s a great release and it comes highly recommended from this particular audience member, I can tell you that... give them a go while they’re still out there. Besides, where else can you see a Dracula film where the title character actually has Armadillo’s running around his castle? Not that many, that’s for sure.

Einstein On The Beach

‘Really’ Of Telly-tivety

Einstein On The Beach
France/UK 2016
Opus Arte Blu Ray All Regions

Composer Philip Glass has been playing a musical backdrop to my life for almost 30 years now. His music, and also this opera in particular, was a big influence on me when I was studying for my degree. Up until then I had been listening primarily to musical scores written for movies but was also shifting into more experimental, contemporary classical stuff. I had already discovered a form of minimalism, the musical form accredited to brilliant composers like Glass and Steve Reich, to a certain extent in the ‘Ladbroke Grove sound’ perpetuated by Michael Nyman, initially through his scores for the Peter Greenaway movies and then onto all his other stuff. When I finished my General Art and Design Diploma I then studied for my degree in Graphic Design at the London College of Printing and it was here, fairly early on, that a fellow student, @thatkeithmartin introduced me to Philip Glass by way of his compositions for the documentary Northstar and the stage show 1000 Airplanes On The Roof. I was absolutely hooked from the opening notes of each and then I went into one of the HMVs in Oxford Street (I don’t believe it’s there anymore) and bought the original CBS CD set of Einstein On The Beach and, predictably, it blew me away.

And that’s the kind of stuff I was listening as a counterpoint to my degree course. A solid wall of Philip Glass in the evenings as I worked on various degree projects and his music just kind of seeped into me and, I’m sure, seeped out again in various ways in my own work on a visual level. And, on and off, I’ve never really stopped listening to him since. I’ve seen him live in concert too many times to count over the years. Watched him do live performances of Koyanisqaatsi and Powaqaatsi a number of times too and seen various operas such as Galileo Galilei and, my favourite of his works, Satyagraha. However, I’ve never had the opportunity to see his opera Einstein On The Beach and apparently, that’s because I missed it when it was in tour in 2013. Which is something I’ve only just found out and which I’m annoyed about but I have, at least, seen this new Blu Ray version of it taken from one of those 2013 productions and... I’m very much better off for having done so.

So I finally got to see what this thing was supposed to look like behind this fantastic curtain of music and... it’s the same but different.

For instance, the opening ‘Knee Play’ music which is one of my favourite all-time Philip Glass pieces and which, in the recording I have,  lasts only four minutes, is performed here in an entirety that I never knew it had... with a long, slow build up to those last few minutes which takes almost a half an hour. I would absolutely love to get a CD of this version but, heck, at least I have it on here (and you can apparently watch this section on you tube too here) and it’s absolutely incredible.

In fact, all in all I’d have to say that this production and the way this has been captured here for the home viewing market, with the director using close ups of various elements of what is often a packed out stage, is just overall incredible in general, barring a minor grumble. That grumble being the introduction, in a few sequences, of some fairly standard dancing moves... thankfully these sections don’t go on too long though and the majority of this thing is absolute bliss. And even if there are some sequences you don’t particularly like, the music is always there in the foreground so, frankly, the whole four and a half hours as featured on this quite nicely put together, two disc blu ray set, is a huge hit with me.

I’d have to say that my favourite part of the opera is the first hour and a half and the opening knee play, where the two ‘main ladies’ start saying words or phrases from the ‘get some wind for the sailboat’ lyrics and hurling out seemingly random numbers (yeah, I bet they’re not). It’s truly startling and the main choreography from original choreographer Lucinda Childs (who put it together in collaboration with Glass back in the early 1970s) is amazing as people move slowly... very slowly... around the stage space and throw out frozen expressions of joy and wonder which, frankly, cracked me up laughing in several places and which really carried me along on a wave of joy right from the word go. As this opening plays out, the chorus gradually, over the space of a quarter of an hour or more, assemble themselves in slow motion until they catch up to the ‘Knee Play' section and start the familiar counterpoint singing... One Two Three Four, One Two Three Four Five Six, One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight as a repeat phrase which then, possibly without some people even noticing, metamorphosises into One Two Three Four, One Two Three Four Five Six, Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight but still retaining the beat for the missing number. It’s just sublime.

And that’s one of main things about the music of Philip Glass that I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with and not realise over the years. It tends to take you by stealth sometimes but there’s always a lot more going on than just a repeat motif... it shifts and strays and progresses itself until it reaches a logical conclusion or change and it does it slowly. Which is another thing which I have a theory on when it comes to people who don’t really ‘get’ the music of Philip Glass. When certain people hear it they tend to hear a jumble of notes repeated very fast, over and over again. Nope, that’s not what it is... as far as I’m concerned...

Think of micropolyphany in music.

It was invented by György Ligeti and some of his music, which was accidentally appropriated by Stanley Kubrick for 2001 - A Space Odyssey without paying the composer (at first), such as Lux Aeterna, uses this invention... which is lots of short, indistinguishable notes played very fast to make up one, long even tone. Think of that concept for a moment and then think about the music of Philip Glass. It sounds fast if you listen on the surface but think about how those notes and phrases are slowly shifting and mutating and you’ll maybe come to the conclusion, as did I back in my college days, that Philip Glass doesn’t really write fast music and that his works do, in fact, incorporate ponderous melody lines. What he does, it is my belief, is write very slow music which is, itself, made up of lots of very fast repeat notes. So try listening to what the notes are saying in clusters rather than as individual notes and... you may start to get hooked on the music the same way I did all those decades ago.

And it’s great hearing this stuff and seeing the accompanying visuals for the first time. Especially with the director hand picking which parts of a composition you see on the stage at any one time so you don’t miss what he considers to be important. It’s also an absolute mind blower to try and figure out how all the performers know where to come in an go out. Glass’s music can’t be all that easy to get right and I wonder how much concentrated counting is going on in the heads of the actors, actresses and singers. My best guess, from having seen some of these singers coming in on the same cue, time after time, is that there is a complex series of clues at work here and each individual is both looking out, and listening out, for them. For instance, when person x gets to that line in the floor over there, the next person can start to move and go into their singing  which will, in turn, trigger somebody else to start their next part of the performance. That’s my best guess scenario anyway.

It must be a fairly complex set of signifiers to get the stuff right, I’m sure and not only extremely easy to screw up but fairly physically demanding... even for dancers (who are notoriously strong). There’s one sequence, for example, lasting around a half and hour or maybe longer, where a girl is strutting backwards and forwards across the stage in repeat motions while her arm is outstretched and pointing upwards at a fixed angle. I was feeling her pain... if you’ve ever tried to hold your arm steady for even a few minutes, let alone keep a beat with the music and keep within your area of a stage while moving fairly quickly... well, you can probably get some idea of what these people are accomplishing here for their art.

The whole opera is very well performed, in fact, and extremely well put together. I’ve both more and less of an idea of what I am listening to every time I reach for that album these days and I think I’m better off for it. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I’m sure, but it is truly brilliant stuff and if you’re a fan of Philip Glass, or even contemporary or historical minimalism in the first place, then you probably owe it to yourself to give this one a look. Especially since it’s clear some revisions or changes have been made to the original text. I’m feeling really grateful to Opus Arte for being able to finally see Einstein On The Beach in a presentation of some sort and I hope they keep up the good work with their Glass back catalogue and release some more of his projects, past and present, in the future. Really looking forward to seeing more of this kind of stuff out there.

Carol

Aird Today, Gone Tomorrow

Carol
2015 UK/USA/France
Directed by Todd Haynes
UK cinema release print.

Exquisite.

That’s probably a good word for this movie, if I’d been asked to sum it up immediately after seeing it at my local cinema.

I don’t think I’ve seen any movies directed by Todd Haynes apart from his other 1950s set film Far From Heaven... which was pretty good and lured me to the cinema with the promise of an interesting Elmer Bernstein score. In the case of Carol there were a number of factors which compelled me to pick this one out among others for my Sunday trip to the local picture house this week.

For one thing, I’d not read a single tweet about this movie from people who had been to see it at the London Film Festival that was, in any way, negative. They’d all been downright through the roof in terms of their positivity, in actual fact. There was also the promise of a new score by Carter Burwell, a composer who I quite like, although I do find him a bit hit and miss. The few tweets I’d seen about the score, however, were also extremely enthusiastic... and so I decided to see this one as soon as I could to see what I thought of said score, in case a purchase of the CD was necessary.

Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t say a major draw to going to see this movie was the prospect of seeing the villain from Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull indulging in hot ‘girl on girl’ action with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but... heck, nobody asked me so I shall refrain from mentioning that aspect of the story unless politely asked.

So this movie is based on a novel Patricia Highsmith wrote under a pseudonym in the early 1950s (which is the period in which this movie is more or less set) called The Price Of Salt. Well, I don’t know what that title’s got to do with... um... anything ;-) but, whatever, it was retitled Carol decades later when it was reprinted under Highsmith’s own name. Alas, it’s not a novel I have read so, in terms of the quality of the adaptation, I can’t tell you how true it is to the source novel... although I understand the ending is not far off, in fact.

What I can tell you is that, with Carol, I’ve seen an absolutely amazing movie and one which will easily slide somewhere into my top ten for this year. The film centres on the intense, loving relationship between the two main protagonists Therese Belivet (pronounced Tirez), and played by Rooney Mara and the title character Carol Aird, played by Cate Blanchett... and the devastating effect it has on both their lives, especially when it is used against Carol to bolster an injunction to prevent her seeing her daughter during a messy, divorce child custody hearing. Both actresses, of course, are absolutely perfect in their roles... Blanchett coming over as a bit splashier than usual but, frankly, I could watch her ‘til the cows come home (so to speak) and with the pixie-like Mara playing almost an Audrey Hepburn/Breakfast At Tiffany’s kind of role, at least in terms of channeling a gorgeously delicate, waifish visual reference that makes up the look of the character.

Watching these two and the chemistry they bring to this half hidden lesbian relationship, and the subtlety of their facial expressions and body language... with the writing often leaving out unnecessary dialogue to accommodate the silent aspects of the performance... it seems pretty clear that the director couldn’t have asked for two more perfect actresses performing their central roles than these two do here. What they bring with them in terms of professional performance is absolutely astonishing.

What’s more rewarding here though, is that the visual design, the editing and the sound design all work in perfect harmony and are used to enhance the performances to the nth degree, with Haynes meticulous control over the look and sound of the film being quite evident in every frame which flickers past the eyes and ears. This is amazing cinema and the director is doing some really cool but controlled things here.

I say he’s meticulous because he’s using pretty much every vertical (and the occasional curve) to split the screen and chop it up into sections throughout the entire movie. Using the lines in sharp contrast, even when they are a background element, and placing the various actors within these sectioned off spaces to lead the eyes of the audience to go exactly where he wants them to in order to pick up on the details of the rich performances littered throughout the canvass of this extraordinary work of art. It’s quite startling how much he does this all the way throughout the running time too... pretty much most, if not all, of the time, I would guess. It’s like watching an Italian giallo from the late 1960s/early 1970s or a movie by Sergio Leone. Everything is compartmentalised and framed within a specific section of space... blinding stuff.

Another thing he does, not quite as often but certainly enough that it keeps cropping up again and again throughout the movie, is to have the camera eye of the collective audience look through something (or occasionally peak out from behind something in terms of camera movement to fulfil the destination of the final frame in a sequence) such as a sheet of distressed glass or a curtain or some such transparent, textured material. This gives the element to a lot of the movie of each audience member being a voyeur rather than just naturally following the drama in the way one normally would. We are collectively eavesdropping on conversations and moments of expression as we observe through a secondary layer and this, of course, makes the audience feel more empathy with the characters even as the director uses the distance of that intermediary plane, combined with the compartmentalising of the screen I’ve already talked about, as a form of visual tension. And, of course, in the many shots where he doesn’t use this tactic, we are suddenly, through that style of entrance into certain scenes of the characters who inhabit the movie, brought into the midst of the action with no barrier to empathy at all. This is because the contrast between shots where he does this and shots where he doesn’t conditions us to feel completely relaxed and in the moment.

He also uses sound quite brilliantly.

For instance, he has a cleverly constructed sequence at the start which he sets up to be a potential book end device for the film and from which most of the action of the running time takes place in flashback. When we see an emotionally fuelled moment early on in the proceedings, which we know will mean a whole lot more to us when we see the back story of the two leading protagonists, Therese finds herself whisked away in a taxi and looking out the window in a possible moment of deep regret (and yeah, of course, we are observing her from the outside of the window which has rain trickling down the glass). As we sense the tension building, the director has the natural sounds of the street, cars and alarm bells from passing premises, coming up in volume on the foley with all the kind of impact that a whistling kettle has when it’s near to boiling point. This perfectly re-enforces the tensions of the emotions the viewer senses he or she is supposed to be feeling while simultaneously signalling the affirmation of alarm as the key tone of the character at this point. And, again, this is a tactic the director seems to use a few times during the course of the film.

And staying with this opening sequence... the other clever thing he does, by using this flashback formula, is set up an assumption that we are seeing the end of the movie when, in fact... well I really don’t want to spoil this one for you but the opening sets up an emotional tone which doesn’t necessarily reveal the true ending of the movie. To quote a cliché, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings and all I will say about the conclusion of this particular ‘forbidden romance’ is... it’s not what I was expecting and I’m a sucker for this kind of ending. So I was really pleased with the way the story content in this movie turned out.

And, of course, we have that score.

Carter Burwell’s score.

Which, to be honest, really was the main reason why I was so curious to see this one. What can I say? It’s brilliant, moving, comes and goes at just the right times in the mix (in between the various 1950s song standards that litter the soundscape) and heightens the emotions beautifully. It is rich and vibrant and I’m pretty sure that as a standalone experience it will be truly wonderful... I know this because I was toe tapping practically the whole way through the movie like I was watching some kind of rock video. However, it has to be said... it’s also a complete copy of the compositional style of composer Philip Glass. I don’t mean just the minimalistic, short cells repeating to bind a slower melody hiding in a faster rhythm approach that Glass uses either... I mean the orchestration of it too. It’s absolutely pseudo-Glass from a specific period which dates it, to my mind, as having come from any or all of his theatre or opera works from the early to late 1980s, in tone. I don’t mean this as a slur to Burwell, who I have admired as a composer ever since I heard and then bought his score for Psycho III on vinyl all those decades ago... I’m sure this is a result of either a strong voice from the director or a case of the temp track taking over at the 11th hour and finalising the style. However, I’m not alone (it turns out) in recognising the fact that this score sounds like it was written by Glass and it does make me wonder just what went on during the post-production of this movie.

That’s okay by me though. I absolutely love the music of Philip Glass so there are no complaints from me here. A friend of mine has told me he’s getting me the score for Christmas and I am really looking forward to picking a few tracks out to play on Christmas morning, time permitting. A truly great piece of work, whether Burwell owes a debt to Glass or not, and absolutely supportive of the images while enhancing and elevating the tone of the emotions. It’s truly amazing stuff and that’s really all I’m going to say about this picture now. Carol is an absolute knock out of a movie and if you call yourself a film buff, a cinephile or, like me, just a plain old cinema goer, then you owe it to yourself not to let this one pass you by. An absolute treat of a movie by a director I’m really going to have to look out for more in the future. Just marvellous.

Fantastic 4

Doom Watch

Fantastic 4
2015 USA
Directed by Josh Trank
UK cinema release print.

Well this one really surprised me.

I was expecting this movie, from the reports I heard of the genesis of the whole film on the internet as it geared up and then entered production, to be truly dreadful. While it certainly has a few real issues, which I think are easy enough to highlight (probably more problematic to fix), I found myself enjoying this film a heck of a lot more than I expected to and I would say that people really need to check this one out for themselves.

I used to read the Fantastic Four as a nipper, back in the early 1970s. I had at least one annual in the seventies detailing their adventures in The Negative Zone, which kinda has a counterpart in this movie version and which, I remember, had a gorgeous Jack Kirby splash page featuring the four of them drawn against a surreal photomontage. My main source of reference for the characters, however, was a book of reprints of the first seven or so issues as a paperback and, of course, reruns of the late 1960s TV cartoon show... I can still hear the music to that one in my head to this day (I wonder if I’ll be able to catch up with those again one day or whether they’re unavailable). I also had a vinyl LP by a group called Icarus as a kid called The Marvel World Of Icarus, which had a great song about the superteam too (and many other Marvel characters) which was always stuck in my head. After it was quickly pulled from circulation and considered a "lost album", it resurfaced relatively recently on CD if you want to check it out from the usual sellers.

I also liked the previous two Fantastic Four movies (and would have loved to see another one of those made) because they were fun... although they really screwed up Doctor Doom, I would have to say. The Roger Corman movie which was made purely to retain copyright of the property in order to make those two, and which was never shown (although you can read my review of the Roger Corman version of Fantastic Four right here) is really not good, to be honest... but I do find it interesting in that this new version of the movie was kinda 'panic made' again because of exactly the same problem... the rights to the characters were going to revert back to Marvel unless Fox made a movie right now. Interesting piece of history repeating itself regarding this property, methinks.

The director here is Josh Trank and I remember when I heard he’d been brought on, I gave a little inner “woohoo” because I’d seen his previous movie, the debut feature Chronicle (reviewed by me here) and had absolutely loved it. Although that’s a relatively low budget, found footage piece, the story of teenagers who accidentally find themselves ‘gifted’ with superpowers and the way it changes them was a really clever piece of cinematic storytelling and it seemed obvious that he was a natural for a superhero team movie at some point. Alas, all the subsequent news I heard after this... down to casting and changing both the origins of the characters and their history made me hate the project more and more each day and, although I quite enjoyed this new version, be warned... this is not the same Fantastic Four that anybody my age will remember from the comics. Even the fact that they’ve dumbed down the adult characters to kids I find objectionable... hey guys... at the very least, Reed Richards had some very distinctive white sideburns... what happened?

However, if you can divorce yourself from the original source material, which it plays around with a great deal, then you can probably hook into this tale of four kids who are almost, but not quite, playing out a less sophisticated, bigger budget version of the directors debut feature, the aforementioned Chronicle. And it’s actually pretty good in a lot of ways. I don’t know what all the negative reviews are about on this one because the acting by the principals; Miles Teller as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Kate Mara as Sue Storm (The Invisible Girl), ex Chronicle co-star Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) and Jamie Bell as Benjamin Grimm (The Thing)... is all pretty good and there’s some strong character work midst all the special effects, which keeps things strolling along. Like I said though, there are some problems with this movie too...

Now I’m not going to go into all the behind the scenes drama on this movie that is being dragged out in the press in the form of leaks and rogue tweets. I have little respect for the Hollywood machine in that it chews up and then spits out talented individuals and turns what could have been great artistic masterpieces into 'by the numbers', emasculated pseudo-spectaculars that underperform due to the very reasons that the studio tampers with the work in the first place. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of the story behind the scenes on this one yet but... well I reckon we’ll know what goes on at some point in the future. There are some things which do hurt the movie though and, because of all the hidden shenanigans on this one, including the cutting before even shooting, by the studio, of three main action set pieces (apparently)... well I’m just not sure who you can blame for any of the slightly negative things which are in this movie... or at least the things I perceive to be negatives.

Okay... so leaving out the complete changing of the characters and their origins, not to mention their age, we have the whole Doctor Doom problem again. Now in the previous two films, part of that problem, as far as I was concerned, was that the actor playing him was pretty unlikeable... yeah, okay, he’s supposed to be a villain but I found it a barrier to his performance. Here, we have a pretty great guy called Toby Kebbell playing the role. I don’t know what else this man’s been in but he does a really great performance in the movie before he turns into the nemesis of the Fantastic Four. However, what with the changes to his origin and his portrayal as some kind of organic, metal monster... he doesn’t really work. It’s something I think may have been a hangover from the Marvel Ultimates comics but, my opinion in movies based on Marvel or DC comics is that, unless it involves Elektra or She-Hulk, anything post 1973 never really happened... go back to the original characters because those ones worked. The biggest problem with Doom here though, apart from the changes on his look and attitude, are that he’s damn near omnipotent. It’s like trying to fight an evil version of Superman and, though the writers here at least use this to force the film back to one of the ideals of the original comic strip from the early 1960s, it makes for a bit of a dull climax to the movie which, in all honesty, leaves you expecting to see more in the next one or two set pieces... before you realise that this is it, the movie is now over.

There seems to be whole sub-plot missing from the movie and it leads to Reed Richards looking like he’s betrayed his friends at one point and... we’re none the wiser because it’s never really explained as to the project he’s working on when he’s on the run, although I assume he’s working on a way to bring back the human version of Ben Grimm. But we’re never enlightened about that matter in the final cut of the movie and neither are any of Reed’s team mates. I suspect the trailer, which shows a version of the super group working together in a way that never actually happens in the film, either has footage not in the final cut or, I suspect, has been cut in a very clever way into fooling the viewer into thinking something else is going on. Either way... you won’t be seeing a fully functional, working team as you do in this version of the movie until their serendipitous final fight at the finale (of sorts).

Which is another problem I had with this movie... even though the final battle (as it turns out) is our first chance to see the team in action together... that’s a bit of a mistake, I think. The special effects and action was handled well enough but the sheer lack of action when the film has been hurtling at a fair momentum to get to these kinds of scenes tempers the movie a little and leads directly into my third and final problem with the film... and I think this is where a lot of the audience probably lost it a bit...

The epilogue to the movie, with the Fantastic Four setting up as their own, government funded super group is... well it’s really badly written. There’s a scene right at the end where they are trying to think of a name to call themselves and I’m guessing the collective audience are thinking exactly what I was thinking... “No... they’re not going to do this like this. Please don’t say the lines I dread are coming. Please don’t do it like this, it’s such a terrible way of doing it in a contemporary movie it’s going to come off as really silly... this is just the worst.” And then... yeah they do it and that’s the punchline leading into the credits roll... I think this must have been the main reason why members of the audience were shouting out that the movie was “rubbish” when they left the screening I saw and, really, I can’t blame them, to be honest.

Not me though because, in spite of these problems, there’s a lot to admire in this movie too. It’s fairly solid apart from scenes like that at the end which, one might suspect, were reshoots with another director anyway (possibly... don’t think we’ll find out conclusively for or against that hypothesis with any honesty for a while yet... I don’t trust big corporations to tell the truth). One of the key things which stopped me losing my rag with the movie and sit up and take notice is that, while it changes everything, the key values of the original comic book... the sense of family and the idea that a group of heroes working together can defeat something they can’t tackle on thier own (something which was no doubt inspired by the Justice Society Of America from the DC comics of the 1940s and their 1960s and onwards counterparts, The Justice League Of America) is something that Fantastic Four comics always took the opportunity to preach to the fan base and, whether you personally embrace those values or not (I don’t really, most of the time), it’s a relatively good set of values to have at some levels and that spirit is definitely in this movie in spades.

Another great thing about this is the music. Now it’s co-composed by Marco Beltrami and one of my favourite composers, the genius concert hall minimalist Philip Glass. However, I’d really like to know the story behind the scenes here because Glass doesn’t work on these kinds of movies, rarely lets his music be timed to a scene in the traditional way most composers have to work (the directors have to cut their scenes to fit his music, not the other way around) and... I just don’t know how he became embroiled in this. What I suspect is he maybe composed a few pieces and Beltrami took them and extrapolated parts to use to build some of the other pieces in the film... my understanding is that Glass himself wasn’t present at the recording sessions which suggests, to me at least, he had a bad experience here and washed his hands of the film as much as he could. That being said, it’s a really strong score and Beltrami and Glass both do a wonderful job on it. It seems a bit ‘dialled down’ in the movie against the sound effects and I felt it a shame that in a sequence where Sue Storm explains the nature of music to Reed Richards, it’s left unscored... but the soundtrack album to this one is awesome and it’ll be on lots of repeat spins on my CD player, I can tell you that much. My copy turned up before I saw the film and I was grooving to it before I got to see the visuals it supported. I doubt if we’ll see Glass come back for any sequels though.... if, indeed, any sequels get to be be made.

And that’s my take on the new Fantastic 4 movie pretty much done. Has it got problems... oh yeah. Do these problems stop it from being an enjoyable movie experience? No, it’s mostly pretty good, well acted, brilliantly scored and, despite some awful scripting in certain scenes (especially the end one), I’d have to say I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than, say, the last 20th Century Fox superhero movie I saw, X-Men: Days Of Future Past (reviewed here). It’s not the exactly the best superhero movie ever made and, while I can’t claim I had a completely fantastic time with it, I certainly was kept entertained for the length of the running time. Maybe not one for big fans of the comic book characters to go see but certainly, if you’re into your superhero movies, this one doesn’t fail so hard as people seem to be saying it does. Give it a look sometime, maybe.