Star Trek: Into Darkness

Dark Trek:
Gorn But Not Forgotten

Star Trek: Into Darkness 
(aka Star Trek 12)
USA 2013
Directed by J. J. Abrams
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Big, wrathful spoilers will awaken 
in this review and walk over your cold corpses.

There’s an old Vulcan proverb that says that, sometimes, it is possible to have your cake and eat it.

Or at least, if there’s not, there probably should be. I don’t think I mentioned it back in my review of the last Star Trek movie (right here) but this ‘have cake and also eat it’ mentality certainly drove the previous film in terms of skewing off the timeline into a new series of adventures with the same characters without having to worry about any previous Star Trek continuity. And it managed to keep the original Leonard Nimoy version of the Spock character in this new universe too.

Star Trek: Into Darkness also, very much, uses this cake-eating logic because what we’ve got here, and this is something a lot of Star Trek fans guessed from early trailers last year, is a partial remake and homage to the two previous Star Trek stories which featured Ricardo Montalban as the superhuman villain Khan Noonian Singh, namely the original series episode Space Seed and its big screen sequel Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Kahn. Given that the second film in the series is so beloved by fans and that this is director J. J. Abrams second film for the franchise (but, given the presence of Nimoy as Spock in these films, certainly the 12th in the series and the 8th to feature Leonard Nimoy as the original Spock), I’m guessing the temptation was always there to match the darkness of The Wrath Of Khan and somewhere in that early process the decision was made to... “well, what the heck, let’s just have Khan in it”.

This, is something which, given the pre-publicity hype on the movie, may have been better highlighted in the marketing instead of being kept a mystery because... well frankly it backfires. The film probably works on two levels but most people who are even minor fans of Star Trek are going to figure out what’s going on very early on. When the role played by British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who appears to demonstrate superhuman combat skills (saving key crew members of the Enterprise from a bunch of klingons) asks how many of the strange, new “super proton torpedos” there are and is told that there are 72, people will probably remember there were 72 left of Khan’s superspecies in the original Space Seed episode and, even if you don’t realise that (and I confess I didn’t)... even I, by that time, had figured out that there were super powered beings being hidden in the torpedos long before any of the characters in the Enterprise crew figure it out.

The story structure does seem to be the biggest weakness of this movie, in all honesty. It’s simplistic and the arcs of the characters are too obviously signposted. When the excellent Simon Pegg, playing Scotty, resigns from Kirk’s command due to a difference of opinion, it’s pretty obvious he’s being left behind to save the day when it looks like the Enterprise crew are about to be destroyed... and I found this kind of set up for a touch of temporary deus ex machina just a little disappointing in the overall scheme of things. And that kind of strategy is pulled out and reused quite a few times in this movie.

A puzzling but major source of enjoyment for the film, though, are the direct quotes and scene remakes from both of the first two films in the franchise. Admiral Pike, for example, is once again seen wearing the outfit that Admiral Kirk wore throughout a lot of Star Trek The Motion Picture, and he even has William Shatner’s “They gave her back to me...” line which, actually, given the context of that line in this movie, kind of hit a bit of a false note with me in all honesty. It was also a bit of a shame to see Pike’s final fate as being so different from the character’s farewell in the original series story The Menagerie.

Of course, the big scene which is going to get a lot of Star Trek fans uptight is the remake of the ‘Spock death scene’ from The Wrath Of Khan, which is plugged in near the end of this film but in reverse, with Kirk dying behind the radiation flooded compartment and the two characters switching and referencing each other’s lines from the original. This all, like a lot of the sequences in this movie, relies on a certain knowledge of the previous versions of the on screen references to tap the audience into feeling anxiety and suspense based on prior versions of the scenes, rather than anything created specifically for this movie... although there are those kinds of moments too, to be sure. The real cheat and ultimate disappointment of the ‘Kirk death scene’ in this one, though, is that even before Kirk is dead, you know exactly how he can be brought back to life again... since the story uses advanced genetics as one of its elements. So this movie is, in no way, as gutsy as when Spock was killed off, possibly for good at the time, back in cinemas in 1982 (although, to be fair, they did build in a little escape door in case they could talk Nimoy back for the third film... one which was used for his return soon after).

Okay, so far I’ve mostly talked about the negative or slightly disappointing aspects of this movie. What I’ve been leaving out, however, is that some of these same scenes, along with loads of others in the movie, are also bags of fun and make for an all around ‘grade A’ entertaining motion picture experience. People who took to the last film in the franchise certainly shouldn’t be disenchanted with this one and I, despite all the things I’ve been mentioning here, really loved it.

The performances were all great although there was slightly less of an ‘ensemble’ feel to it with Sulu, Chekhov and even McCoy not getting that much chance to shine here... but then again, that would also be in keeping, to some extent, with the way the original series was put together in the 60s which, although it did have a very good ensemble cast, was very much the Kirk and Spock show for a lot of its running time (something some members of the original cast, famously, never seemed to forgive William Shatner for, for some reason).

There’s a lot of action in this one and lots of bright, classic Star Trek colours (intermingled with a touch of dreary colour homage to the look of the first film in the franchise too). There’s even a nice line which relates to the fan pleasing “red shirt” status, when Chekhov is promoted to Mr. Scott’s post and asked to “put on the red shirt”, which immediately causes the fans in the audience to wonder if they are going to be killing Chekhov in this one. Nice references, too, to past Trek races and characters such as the Gorn and Harcourt Fenton Mudd but, I did wonder why there was only one tribble in the film (which is used as a plot device, as it happens). Surely there should have been more of them after a short while?

One big old character reference is the introduction of a young Dr. Carol Marcus, who we only knew as an “old flame” character at a much later stage in her life in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. We know in the original version of the timeline she gives birth to Kirk’s son who is also in The Wrath Of Khan, and who is killed by the Klingons in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock... so we already have foreknowledge of where these characters may well be going in future films in the franchise.

It’s a shame that Noel Clarke (companion Mickey from Doctor Who and a successful writer/director in his own right) didn’t get more of a role in this film, however. His scenes are over and done with pretty quickly and his character is just used to establish the threat the Enterprise crew in this film face. That threat, however, is indeed Khan, and although Benedict Cumberbatch obviously plays him in a completely different way to the way Riccardo Montalban used to play him, he is still a very real and dangerous threat and, when you’ve got an actor of Cumberbatch’s calibre in the role... you know you are  not going to be let down. I was very pleased to see that the character, and his superpowered army, have all been preserved in cryogenic sleep and locked away in a warehouse, in the style of the ending of Raiders Of The Lost Ark... Khan with a sinister smile on his face. I hope the director and writers consider bringing this character back for the next installment in the franchise to cause more mayhem... he has, after all, kind of become the Moriarty character to Kirk’s Sherlock in a way (which is kinda ironic, given the role he’s most famous for on British TV screens).

Added into the mix, of course, is Abrams’ regular composer Michael Giachinno, who both repeats and builds on his excellent score from the previous film and, thankfully, remembers to bring back Alexander Courage’s original fanfare and theme tune right where it’s needed. I’ve already got the CD on pre-order from Amazon and am looking forward to wearing it out as soon as possible.

All in all, then, Star Trek: Into Darkness is wildly entertaining and, as far as I’m concerned, very repeat watchable (yeah, I’ll be getting in line for another showing and grabbing the BluRay when it’s out). Certainly it might annoy hardcore fans of the franchise but I think, even if they lighten up a little they will probably enjoy it too. The reliance towards past reference to hit the right notes worries me a little in terms of Abrams being entrusted to direct the next Star Wars movies (we need proper sequels, not a bunch of old character references) but certainly he’s not been too disrespectful to the Star Trek franchise and these particular movies seem to be heading in the right direction I think... although the laws of physics are completely abandoned in these new movies. Don’t get me started.

Either way, it was good to see a movie where the famously mocked and quoted Captain Kirk line/word was switched to Spock to deliver in this one... “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”


Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Doctor Who - Nightmare In Silver

High Cyber Diet

Doctor Who - Nightmare In Silver
Airdate: 11th May 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: Yeah... minor spoilers, I guess.

You know, I really used to like the cybermen as a nipper, growing up with Jon Pertwee as The Doctor. That’s possibly because they were never on TV at that point, of course. Jon Pertwee didn’t met up with them until he officially came back to the role one last time in the anniversary story The Five Doctors. But I knew about them, of course. Because quite apart from Pertwee standing against one of them on the wraparound cover shoot for the Doctor Who tenth anniversary magazine (which I still have) all the kids my age, or any who were of any interest at any rate, would read the Target novelisations of the older stories and, as you may or may not know, the cybermen were pretty much running rampant through Patrick Troughton’s rein on the show, hot on the heels of the really sinister looking versions used in their first outing, the final William Hartnell story The Tenth Planet. So we all knew who they were and we all wanted to see them in action.

So it was pretty cool, actually, when Tom Baker’s incarnation of The Doctor met them in Revenge Of The Cybermen... and then they didn’t come back again for a while. Tom Baker never met them again but when Peter Davison came on board they returned in a big way in the story Earthshock, which truly brought the scariness of the cybermen back in a marching legion of terror... very sinister first episode if I recall and, pre-internet, nobody really had a clue they would be back until the big reveal at the end of the first episode. Not only that, but they killed off The Doctor’s companion Adric, who sacrificed himself to save the planet Earth (and who destroyed all the dinosaurs in the process if I remember correctly). This was a big event and I remember the end credits of that episode being silent (do I remember correctly?) and focussing on the decimated remains of Adric’s gold rimmed badge for mathematical excellence, which he’d used to take out one of the cybermen with... being that they could be killed by the introduction of gold into their system.

But after that, things started to get a bit silly.

The BBC, in much the same way as they have been behaving over the last 6 or 7 years with the show, didn’t really want to waste those new costumes... so the cybermen started coming back again just a little more frequently until, by the time we got up to Sylvester McCoy’s stint on the show, they really were nothing more special than “monster of the week” and were, for all intents and purposes... really boring.

When the show came back under the Russel T. Davies era, the programme had been off the airwaves long enough to once more generate big interest at the return of the cybermen and, although the new design was somewhat juvenile (with a big C across the front) there was enough drama in the story to make their welcome return a success. When they went up against the daleks at the end of David Tennant’s first season, all the fans were into it because, well, ever since the early days of their first appearances on the show in the 60s, people had been wondering who would win a fight between a dalek and a cyberman.

But then the rot set in again. Not only did the cybermen keep coming back repeatedly to the show, but they were still cursed with that blasted C on the front of their armour. Honestly, I’ll never know why the BBC don’t learn about why it’s not a good idea to keep recycling the same costumes in close proximity. The Doctor travels in time as well as space... it’s completely impractical he’d keep meeting the same model of cybermen in different times just because the BBC don’t want to pay out for a new costume design, or rebuild any of the, much cooler, older ones for that matter.

But never mind all that. Neil Gaiman, one of modern fantasy’s great writers (his spin off from his own The Sandman comics, Death: The High Cost Of Living is one of the greats in modern comic book fiction) and who had a very successful episode of the show last series with The Doctor’s Wife (reviewed here) was promising to make the cybermen scary again and, to boot, the BBC were upgrading the design a little. So there was maybe a glimmer of hope there after all.

So was this episode of the show really a Nightmare In Silver or was it more of a bad dream in platinum?

Well I’m sorry to have to report, since I do admire this writer greatly, that for me it really wasn’t a show which was in any way scary or made me feel threatened by the menace that the cybermen should be seen as. It was definitely one of the less interesting stories of the second half of “series seven” although, that being said, it was still a damn sight better than the majority of episodes in the first half.

But, it certainly wasn’t a tragedy either. It was still entertaining and there were definitely some nice things going on in there. When the cybermen started moving very fast, almost like they were teleporting, that was a good sign and I was hoping for more in that vein but, alas, this advantage wasn’t pressed against the army defending the planet and ultimately, uneasy moments were few and far between.

But, like I said, there were some nice things. The Doctor’s ongoing battle of wits with the cyber version of himself in his head was kinda cool and it was a way in to show us that there was a memory block in his head when it comes to new companion Clara. There was also a reference, with Cyber Planner version of himself calling himself Mr. Clever, to the phrase that Clara’s various “apparitions” keep repeating... Run You Clever Boy And Remember... the initials of which make up the word CYBARR... except I don’t believe that "almost had me conclusion" for a minute. Moffat knew we’d all figure that out last year so I’m just assuming the lameness of that particular anagram is dead wrong. I hope.

There were some particularly nice scenes with Clara’s personality really coming to the fore (I think she may be River or The Doctor or possibly Rani or The Master, by the way) and it was really good to see the chemistry between her and Matt Smith working quite well. Also, there was a blink and you’ll miss it alignment of hordes of cybermen who make up the shape of an inverted question mark, just like the inverted question mark that hangs around Clara’s neck... so that was kinda cool. As was the introduction of the new upgrade of the old cybermats... namely the cybermites.

Add to this a very nice turn by Warwick Davis as someone who turns out to be a quite important character and some excellent scoring by Murray Gold, once again using variations of the cyberman theme he composed for their first appearance against David Tennant, plus a few nice appearances of the Eleventh Doctor sub theme, and it made for an okay, entertaining, close but no cigar episode of the show, which is fine. That’s my opinion anyway and it’s hugely disappointing that I didn’t like an episode penned by Neil Gaiman all that much.

And, of course, next week we have the final episode of the current series, which everyone is hoping will be the big reveal. Not of The Doctor’s name, of course. Nobody wants to know that and, frankly, I really hope they don’t reveal it. But hopefully something will come to some kind of conclusion with the current show's dangling story threads. This might, as it happens, even be the last time we see either of Alex Kingston or Jenna Louise Coleman in the programme. I hope not but there’s always that chance. I know lots of people, myself included, are hoping that the return of The Great Intelligence will somehow bring The Doctor’s old foe The Yeti out of hybernation... but something tells me that may not happen, I’m afraid.

Oh well. I’ll be trying to make it through to next weeks episode then... keeping myself alive for the sake of a TV show is as good a way of carrying on as any other I would guess. Hopefully I’ll see some of you here after for a major autopsy... if all things go well.

I Am Waiting (Ore Wa Matteru Ze)

The Wait Escape

I Am Waiting (Ore Wa Matteru Ze)
1957 Japan
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Criterion Eclipse Region 1 (NIkkatsu Noir Box)

Warning: Slight spoilers waiting in the dark shadows.

I Am Waiting is one of those films that, as a watcher of many pieces of cinematic art, you are just waiting to stumble across sometime because they are such cool films and you know your life just got richer when you’ve seen something like this for the first time. It happens less and less the older you get but I, for my part, do get at least three or four movies a year like this slipping in under the radar still... and I really love it when I find something which I know I will be going back to in certain moods and moments of my life yet to come.

The first feature film by Japanese director Koreyoshi Kurahara, I Am Waiting, dates back to 1957 and stars the “on the rise” Japanese matinee idol Yûjirô Ishihara (who got to have such a following in Japan that he even turned up in the movie Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines). This is my first watch of this, as it’s included in a boxed set my parents got me for my birthday earlier in the year, the Criterion/Eclipse imprint of Nikkatsu Noir. As a fair few of the “cooler” movies I’ve seen over the last 20 or so years have come from the Nikkatsu studios, I was keen to see what some of their early “noir” movies looked like... this, like many I presume, is styled in such a way as to compete with the various American and French films that were so popular in Japan at the time (and probably still are today no doubt... especially American movies, who are back to being the rulers of most of the world when it comes to getting their product seen, it seems to me).

The film opens with the lead character, Jôji Shimaki, closing his riverside restaurant for the night and walking the gloomy path to post a letter which will have some significance as the story progresses. Here, he is the epitome of the relaxed and gloomy noir sensibilities required in abundance for this shadowy kind of movie making and, as he continues on past the post box, he stumbles upon Saeko (played with much on screen presence by Mie Kitahara), a mysterious woman who looks like she’s just about ready to throw herself in that river. Jôji comes to her rescue with offers of shelter and employment and before you know it, she is developing an unrequited relationship with him... but he has no time for love as his missing brother’s shadowy past and his own former life as a championship boxer who killed someone by accident outside the ring return and collide to haunt his world. When he finally finds out what has happened to his brother, who was supposed to have gone to Brazil a year and a half ago and “set up shop” so he could follow along after... it turns out it all ties in with the gang of cheap hoods who have reclaimed Seiko and her “canary voice” as their own.

Shot in stark black & white and featuring a story that doesn’t always quite unfold the way you think it’s going to, you can see exactly the route laid out for you like an open map when you realise how these kinds of films evolved and mutated into the kind of youth culture crime movies I normally associate with the Nikkatsu studio, namely and especially with the gradual evolution of their infamous director Seijun Suzuki, who himself only made his debut feature a year before this. It’s interesting to  view this film as possibly one by a young bunch of director contemporaries who would all evolve via the same kinds of influences and make these kinds of films at Nikkatsu, Daiei and Toho studios that would define the style of film-making that went on in that country... certainly influenced by the outside forces in other countries who were dictating their market for them but also, I am sure, forging their own visual/audio language that are what we think of when we think of what they were doing from, say, the mid sixties to the mid seventies.

At least, that’s how I’m guessing it all went down anyway... without having seen any other of Kurahara’s movies to date but certainly having seen a fair few of his contemporaries flex their visual muscles. And Kurahara certainly lets loose with a certain amount of creative flair in this one. Shots composed beautifully for a 1.33:1 aspect ratio that are easily the equal of anything he and his contemporaries would have been designing for either Academy Ratio or whatever novelty form of ‘studio re-christened scope’ alternatives were the going rage some five or ten years later.

It’s really beautiful to behold and it doesn’t hurt that it’s got a score by semi-regular Kurosawa and Godzilla composer Masaru Satô either. And it’s also got some great performances in it too... Yûjirô Ishihara plays Jôji as a depressed but good natured man haunted by his fate, while at the same time also managing to balance that with a smart sheen of energetic enthusiasm, which makes him interesting to watch. Kitahara’s performance as Saeko is similarly haunted and depressed in its basic execution but where Isihara is all action and movement, Kitahara just uses a kind of static force to lift the scene and she is content to quitly smoulder and speak and act in a more minimalistic style which, offset against her leading man, is really something which holds your attention. It all just works very well.

I Am Waiting is not going to be everyone’s cup of Japanese green tea but certainly, if you like the look and feel of films by such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Seijun Suzuki, Sam Fuller and, I think, the young Ingmar Bergman, then I Am Waiting is probably going to go down very well on the tastebuds I reckon. Sip it slowly and savour every frame though... don’t gulp it down when you have no time to reflect afterwards. Certainly a movie I’ll be coming back to, I’m sure, and something I kind of wish I’d had the opportunity to be able to see a few decades ago when I was in my teens. Give it a watch if you get the chance.

The Spy Who Loved Me

That Winking Feeling

The Spy Who Loved Me
1977 UK
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Okay, so here’s the deal with this movie.

I loved The Spy Who Loved Me as a kid but, as I look at it nowadays, I think it’s where the rot really did set in for the Roger Moore Bond films. I don’t think it’s particularly his fault but the character of Bond was definitely softened down in this movie and although I can see the reasoning behind it... it really takes the Bond films way too far into another realm for me. But there are still some really enjoyable things in this one so... let’s have a look at it.

The Spy Who Loved Me is a Bond movie with a number of “firsts” for the series. For example, it was the first of the EON Bond movies to be produced solo by Cubby Broccoli after his business partner on the previous nine movies, Harry Saltzman, had to bow out due to some extreme financial difficulties. It was also the first Bond movie to be recorded and presented in stereo sound and it also, while I’m talking technical details, marked a return to a full 2.35:1 aspect ratio in the Bond films (the previous two movies had been released in 1.85:1).

The first film, as well, to feature three new regular characters who would appear in the films a number of times later. The first of these is the character of General Gogol, played by Walter Gotell (who had played a villanous SPECTRE agent in From Russia With Love), a character who stays with the Bond series up to and including Timothy Dalton’s first stab at the role in The Living Daylights.

The second character is only glimpsed for a few shots, doing a drink inspired double take when observing Bond’s exploits, and whom I can only refer to as... “dodgy, drinking tourist”. He appears for the first time in a Bond film here observing Bond’s submarine car (which I’ll talk about in a bit) as it emerges from the water. He would also be seen in the next couple of Bond movies too... playing the same character and doing pretty much the same thing for a couple of shots.

The third new “regular” is, of course, Richard Kiel as the steel toothed comedy assassin Jaws, who is always popular with fans of this and the next Bond movie.

It’s also the first appearance (to my knowledge) of Robert Brown in the franchise, playing a completely different character to the one he would go on to play later in the series... replacing Bernard Lee as “M” after Lee’s last appearance in the sequence in the next film, Moonraker. Another noteworthy acting appearance would be the reappearance of George Baker in the series, although not playing the same role as he played in his previous appearance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. 

Asides from the lovely Barbara Bach as the leading Bond lady, there are also a couple of appearances by famous Hammer Horror girls in this movie, namely the gorgeous Valerie Leon and... oh yeah, I’ll get to the other one a little later. She’s really special.

This film, in all fairness, is a bit of a dumb movie in comparison to some of the previous films in the series. The “detective” work done by Bond and the British and Russian secret service is not exactly spectacular, brain teasing stuff as it just relies on the main villain’s people making mistakes and pointing out that they are the bad guys... to all intents and purposes. Also, there’s a certainly jumpiness to the editing in relation to seguing from one scene to the next and, although I thought this may have been due to missing footage when I recently looked at this film again for this review, I realised that the other time I had picked up on something similar was in my review of You Only Live Twice... which I now remember is by the same director. So I think I’m just picking up on a stylistic signature which I don’t quite like, rather than anything particularly bad (so I’m kinda pleased about that).

Maybe the problems I have with the story comes from the fact that this movie did not have any of the elements from the original novel in it. Ian Fleming had insisted that the story in the novel would not be made in to a film and he really didn’t think much of this novel. It wasn’t even published until after his death, as he had not wanted it released during is lifetime... which it wasn’t. This is a shame, in my opinion as, from what I can remember of it when I read it, it’s definitely one of the best novels in the series... maybe even the best. It’s also the most unusual, told through the eyes of the lead female character and including James Bond in only a few chapters. Definitely worth a read.

This film itself is, perhaps, remembered so well today because it has two of the greatest 007 gadgets in Bond history since the introduction of the Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger.

The first of these gadgets is, of course, the white Lotus Esprit which turns into a submarine at the flick of a switch. It’s a marvellous and sleek looking vehicle and every boy my age (I was 9 at the time) wanted one... and probably most boys my age did have one, in a miniature form. Corgi’s Lotus Esprit car was, I believe, in shops even before this movie came out and, I expect, was the second biggest selling Corgi Bond toy ever. It had rockets that fired out of the back windshield when you wiggled the top periscope thingy (if you’d remembered to pre-load the rockets) and submarine fins and rudder etc that came out the sides and back when you pressed the black “vent” on the front of the car. Cool stuff.

Unfortunately there was a big design flaw with this particular Corgi model and I don’t know a single kid who didn’t have exactly the same problem with their Corgi Lotus, and it was this... the bloody fins would hardly stay in! Anything you did with the car would immediately trigger those damn fins to shoot out the sides and back (which could be quite painful, depending on how you were holding it) and you would spend ages then trying to push the damn things back in and actually get them to “catch” on whatever was supposed to be holding them inside the car... only to be frustrated less than a minute later when something else triggered their unwanted release.

This was such a frustrating toy!

Fire the rockets out the back of the car by wiggling the periscope... and the fins would be released. Roll your car along on its wheels for more than two seconds... and the fins would be released. Look at your car in a funny way while it was sitting on a shelf on the far side of the room... and the fins would be released. In the end you’d have to resort to pushing bits of paper back into the housing to try to get the damn things to stay in but this was never a satisfactory arrangement either.

In Corgi’s defence, I will say that when they released special anniversary editions of their Bond cars a couple of decades ago, I purchased a new version of the Lotus (along with anniversary editions of the Aston Martin, the open top car from You Only Live Twice and the slightly remodelled Moon Buggy from Diamonds Are Forever) and this design problem has obviously been fixed for this edition. The fins finally stayed in!

The other big “gadget” in this movie is, of course, one of the loveliest creatures to ever walk the earth who is a special supervillain’s secret weapon in her own right! Yeah, you guessed it, Britain’s “First Lady Of Fantasy”, the gorgeous Caroline Munro is in this movie and just her presence in a few scenes adds so much to this film. Unfortunately, she is overdubbed with another voice (a fate which befell an unbelievably large amount of actors and actresses in the Bond series) but she is all you can watch in the scenes she is in and, as the assassin Naomi, she gives the Moore Bond films their one big iconic moment. As she is flying her black helicopter and riddling Bond’s Lotus with a hail of machine gun fire she winks slowly at Bond, viewed by the audience’s camera-eye, and it’s a wink I’ll always remember and think of when I think of this era of James Bond movies... a wink that could launch a thousand ships.

Ken Adam’s set design is marvellous, especially the look of Stromberg’s aquatic lair and a big, super ship which swallows submarines up in much the same way that spaceships are swallowed up in director Lewis Gilbert’s previous Bond adventure, You Only Live Twice. Ken Adams even had Stanley Kubrik secretly visit this particular set (for which an entire studio was built at Pinewood to hold it) in order to give tips on how to actually light the thing... which is something the press didn’t pick up on at the time.

The music is of note in some ways too. Composed by Oscar winner Marvin Hamlisch, the title song Nobody Does It Better, is easily one of the greatest Bond songs in the series and, the action music from the opening ski chase and parts of the helicopter chase with the aforementioned Caroline Munro is fantastic... although more so in the reworked album version of the music as Bond ‘77 than the film presentation of it, it has to be said. The rest of the music in the film, however, is absolutely dire and, surprisingly, for what is quite a long Bond movie, there’s not a heck of a lot of it either... vast stretches of it are left unscored and, asides from a couple of minutes in an Egyptian ruin which sounds like it must have originally been temp tracked by John Barry’s pre-credits music from From Russia With Love, is pretty unmemorable and unremarkable. Wallpaper music as opposed to the kind of souped up dramatic scoring the film so needs in certain sequences.

And that’s about all I got to say on this one. Certainly, by no means, the weakest of the Moore films... The Spy Who Loved Me certainly represents a sea change in the tone of the character and has not, in my opinion, aged all that well. Definitely worth the price of admission though because, if the Lotus Esprit doesn’t arouse your interest, the presence of the wonderful Caroline Munro is bound to do the trick. That wink will always be with me... nobody does it better.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror

Value Added Strax

Doctor Who - The Crimson Horror
Airdate: 4th May 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: Crimson spoilers waiting 
to slowly seep through you below...

Well that was all rather a lot of fun for the hundredth episode since the new era of stories started, counting from when Russel T. Davies ressurected of the show.

The Crimson Horror is the third, so far, Doctor Who story to feature one of my favourite triumvirates of regular characters... the Silurian Madame Vastra, her human lover Jenny and their Sontaran assistant Strax. The story is, like their previous outing in The Snowmen, set firmly in Victorian times but shifted away from their regular “beat” in London, instead moving to the Yorkshire town of Bournv... err... Sweetville. It’s possibly not as great an episode as either The Snowmen or A Good Man Goes To War, but it’ certainly not far from the standard set in those and Mark Gattis, a man I trust for writing homages to the pulps of this particular period, shows he’s more than up for the job.

The story starts off with the old chestnut of the last thing a person seeing before death being retained by the eyes and the opening hook, after a man has been struck down by the delightfully lurid pulp terror known as The Crimson Horror, is that his last image was of The Doctor. Then, post credits, we follow an investigation by our three Victorian heroes which eventually, after some time, leads us to The Doctor, who has turned crimson himself and is held prisoner and paralysed almost... until he can reverse the process in a convenient cabinet which I guess one has to write in for these kinds of stories.

Then, rescued by Jenny, he relates to her and the audience the story which has led up to his near terminal crimson complexion and this is done in a beautifully treated flashback which looks like old grainly filmstock and photographs. Now, I could be picky (and I might as well be, for when am I not?) and mention that the style of moving image used in this sequence or the sounds used to trigger to a modern audience the capturing of still images, are not actually as old as the period on which they are being used... of course, I’m no expert on that so please comment below if I am wrong, but the fact that they made an effort to give these flashback moments a sense of the past which could artistically be linked to that kind of period was both admirable, with a slight dash of genius... so I’m quite happy to forgive them any amount of what I would call deliberate, controlled anachronism within the delivery of the story.

What’s more compelling is that this means that the story has actually started mid-way through, Now I’m guessing it was probably scripted like this but it could also have been an editing decision, since a lengthier selection of footage from the flashback starting off the story would have done the same thing in a more linear fashion and placed The Doctor and Clara front and centre, right from the outset. However, a smart decision harkening back to the days of early Marvel comics and before, in terms of a useful narrative structure to lead you to the hook of the story in a more timely and dramatic fashion, has been made and since this method is not all that often used in Doctor Who (although taken to the Nth degree, as you can get away with in science fiction, then show runner Steven Moffat’s original Weeping Angels story Blink could also be considered an extreme version of the same technique, if you chose to decode it that way), I was very happy to see the episode structured in this manner and it certainly made sense to do this in a story that was so aptly grounded in late nineteenth century pulp fiction.

The action and detective work never really flagged and it had some very nice moments in it which I am very grateful to Gattis for. The fan-pleasing reference to Fourth and Fifth Doctor companion Tegan Jovanka was very much “on the money” for instance, and a scene which was built around a terrible joke, with Strax making use of Thomas Thomas, who is the living Victorian embodiment of the modern Tom Tom satellite navigation systems in cars is one of the reasons I’ll continue to watch the show even though it does seem to be going a bit pear shaped as of late. The relationship between the characters played by Diana Rigg and her real life daughter as villainess and blind daughter was all very nice and there were some truly cool musical moments to support scenes such as the brilliant bit where Jenny strips down to black leather fighting gear to knock a few heads. All good stuff and I think the show needs more of these characters and more scenes like these, please!

My only real disappointment with this episode was the baggage I brought with me. I assumed that since Vastra, Jenny and Strax do not know about the living version of companion Clara, that we were going to get some kind of big revelation this week when they think that their version has returned from the dead. All we got, alas, in return for those kinds of questions throughout the episode was, unfortunately, answers along the lines of “It’s complicated.” They’re playing their cards very close to their chest again on this one but I’m assuming we’ll find out whether Clara is either friend (a regenerated time lord such as Romana, or The Doctor’s Daughter or even The Doctor himself) or foe (The Rani, The Master, a construct of the Great Intelligence or the Daleks) or something I haven’t quite worked out yet in two weeks time... when River Song returns to our screens.

But, ultimately, my own expectations of the story did not stop the episode from being, mostly, a brilliant addition to the show and, if not a rival to the likes of shows like the Victorian set story The Talons Of Weng Chiang, certainly a good stab at being a worthy successor. Not sure if I’m looking forward to Neil Gaiman’s take on the Cybermen next week but we shall see what we shall see, I guess.

The Man With The Severed Head

Giving Head

The Man With The Severed Head
1973 Spain/France
Directed by Juan Fortuny
Arrow Films DVD Region 0

So, before I tell you about this film, let me tell you of my personal Mystery Of The Man With The Severed Head.

A couple of years ago I was on my lonesome, browsing through the horror section of Fopp records, when I noticed this Paul Naschy movie on their shelves. I made a mental note to buy the thing when I next had some spare cash but, as luck would have it, by the time I’d gotten home I’d completely forgotten the title of the movie (one of many I’ve forgotten under similar circumstances). I’d told nobody I wanted to see this and I wouldn’t have been able to recall the title to order a copy for myself if I’d wanted to anyway. The film soon passed from memory.

Imagine my surprise then when, a number of weeks ago, a non-franked, plain white padded envelope arrived for me with my name and address ink jet printed onto a label, containing this particular film, The Man With The Severed Head. No note, no compliments slip, no kind of traceable details. Just the movie, brand new, still in shrink-wrap.

Can you, in fact, imagine the full, horrifying implication of my surprise?

Frankly, since only a handful of people had my address and almost none of them even knows who Paul Naschy is, my only logical conclusion was to perceive this inflammatory cinematic epistle as a death threat. I tried to trace who would send me this sinister package in the post but to no avail. If it had been called The Fluffy Bunnies Meet The Easter Beagle then I probably wouldn’t have worried about is so much and for so long. But The Man With The Severed Head? I thought about notifying the police but, fortunately, held off for a couple of weeks and, luckily the mystery was finally solved. If you want to know the end of this story, and why some of you who I know read this blog might have received a similar package in the post, I’ll clear that all up at the end of this review.

So onto the film itself...

The Man With The Severed Head is a terrible movie.

There’s no two ways about it. It would have been nice if it had been so terrible it was also really enjoyable but, alas, while there are moments of unintentional laughs to be found in it, it’s mostly just really dull and frankly, unwatchable, for a lot of its running time. And that’s a shame because I do quite like Paul Naschy.

To further rub salt in the wounds, the film starts off really well and I was really getting into it for the first ten minutes. It begins with a store robbery that goes wrong when one of a safecracker’s gang accidentally sets off an alarm and they are being chased by the police in a low budget car chase. During this time the boss/safecracker, played by Paul Naschy, gets shot and the gang get their resident “patcher-upper” of a doctor to try to operate on the bullet that has penetrated Naschy’s head but it’s no use. Then, rather than take their boss to a hospital, the “patcher-upper” takes the gang to the only real and obvious choice left to them. He takes them all to his ex-student scientist friend who says he is able to help Naschy by grafting extra brain from a freshly severed head.

Because, yeah! That’s always the correct solution, right?

The film gets convoluted and details the rivalry between two criminal gangs as our “heroes” kill and behead the rival gang’s leader’s head to help out Naschy and everyone is trying to kill each other while Naschy starts taking on certain sadistic and animalistic traits of the other gang’s former boss. And of course, the only way they could think to cut off the rival gang leaders head was to position him in the path of an oncoming train.

Yes, I’m not making this up.

This film is filled with incompetent characters and bizarre moments of badly simulated sex (um... there’s no way you’re even anywhere near target with your naughty parts in rough proximity to hers mister actor), most of which are from another, alternate cut by the looks of it but which have been added as deleted scenes on the DVD extras. There’s also a bizarre song and dance number which is so badly edited into the actual body of the film, that I’m pretty sure that it originally came from a completely different film altogether and is just spliced into this one without any real thought about matching up the sets, style or colours etc.

Yeah, I know. It sounds ludicrous and like it should be one of the most entertaining bad movies going... trust me, it’s not. It’s just bad.

The opening sequences are really good but Naschy drops out as a character and only comes back for brief scenes in the last third of the movie, which is a shame because I’m thinking if he had been given more of a role in this the movie might have at least survived the passage of time as something even remotely watchable. Alas, it didn’t. And that’s all I’ve really got to say about it.

I tried watching it with the English audio dub at first (because I thought that was the original soundtrack) but soon switched to the French with English subtitles option. Why? Well lets just say that the phrase translated from the French as “don’t be playing the fool” turned up on the English dub in a grotty British accent which had decided to dub the line as “Don’t be a c*nt!” This level of profanity is pretty out-of-place to the kind of film it is and the time period it was made (although I have no problems believing it actually went out like this on original UK release prints, if it indeed was ever released theatrically in the UK) that I guessed pretty early on that the film had not been shot in English. Although, maybe I should have left the English dub on for comical effect?

The Arrow DVD comes with an additional but, I’m sorry, badly knocked up “documentary” on Paul Naschy... but I use the term documentary lightly because it really is not at all informative about the man’s career or life and the various people talking about him (between bizarrely unrelated clips which don’t match what most of them are talking about, presumably due to licensing restrictions) merely serve as a study of the man’s good character and don’t really tell you too much. The only saving grace of this DVD that I could see, asides from the handsomely morbid cover art and the reversible sleeve with one of the foreign posters for the movie, is the roughly two minutes of footage in the extra feature where we see “the first lady of fantasy” Caroline Munro being interviewed about Naschy... now that was a welcome touch.

All in all, though, I’d have to say it’s well worth giving this movie a wide berth. I can’t imagine sitting through this one again and I am just grateful I didn’t actually buy it myself a couple of years ago when I saw it in Fopp.

But at least I know who sent it, now.

A friend, Jason, who has a stall at some of the Film Fairs I occasionally go to, told me that it was Arrow Films themselves who had sent this particular package out to a load of people. Remember in my Zombie Flesh Eaters review (read it here) I’d warned that the first pressing of that was short a few seconds after the opening credits and that you had to send the first disc back to Arrow to get a corrected one (which they did and it arrived very promptly)... well this is a follow up for everybody who paid the postage to send that disc back to them, apparently. Everybody on that list gets sent a free copy of The Man With The Severed Head as compensation. It’s a really nice after thought and good customer service, although I’m sure they probably picked their slowest seller to give out for free. It really is a bad movie. Still, it’s really good of them to do that and they should be applauded... even if they didn’t tell people about it and probably loads of people also now believe they have had a death threat... honestly, just a compliment slip would have been nice.

Iron Man Three

Through A Glass Starkly

Iron Man Three
USA/China 2013
Directed by Shane Black
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Tiny, slight but sharp, splinters of 
spoilers working towards the heart of this review.

Please Note: The posters advertising this movie refer to the title as Iron Man 3 whereas, on the actual print of the film I saw playing at UK cinemas last week, it was definitely Iron Man Three... which is how I will refer to it in this review. 

You know, I really have always liked screenwriter Shane Black’s work a heck of a lot. Specifically, I loved his writing on the first Lethal Weapon movie, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. When he got his directing gig on another gem he’d written (adapted from an old Mike Shayne adventure) called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I was blown away all over again. I think this guy is a true artist when it comes to popular culture and I look forward to him getting his Doc Savage movie off the ground (as long as it’s set sometime in the thirties that is). Which is why I kinda regret some of the things that I feel I need to write here to give Iron Man Three a fair shake of the stick.

I also really loved the first Iron Man movie. I think it’s certainly one of the best two or three super-hero movies ever made and it delivers some serious and sometimes morally challenging ideas with the grace, delivery and style of a 1930s screwball comedy, especially in the scenes of dialogue between Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr) and Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). I couldn’t say enough good things about that first movie when it was initially released and that’s not really changed in terms of the first one now. The second movie though... well the Stark/Potts relationship took a backseat for the most part and ultimately, I felt kind of let down by it and, though it pains me to say it, I feel the same about Iron Man Three in some regards.

Now please don’t get me wrong here... I thought Iron Man Three, the fifth film to feature Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man (so it’s really Iron Man 5 if you’re counting people!) had some fantastic stuff in it and some of Shane’s writing in the smaller, dialogue filled sequences is absolutely brilliant. In fact, on paper, there’s really not much not to like. The main title character is changed by the events of this movie, which may well have some sort of impact in future films and some new concepts are introduced such as not having to be in the Iron Man suit to be able to pilot it, for one, and then the next logical jump from that being that you can command a whole army of empty suits into your personal crack unit... that was a nice idea (although how they top this kind of thing in future movies I don’t know).

It’s absolutely filled to the brim with some nice moments such as Happy (played again by the director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Jon Favreau) being addicted to the TV show Downton Abbey and the brilliant portrayal of The Mandarin by Ben Kingsley which, if you know as little about the screen incarnation of this character as I did, will be quite a pleasant surprise to you when Tony Stark’s character gets to met him in the flesh. The movie also deals with concepts such as a lead character who inadvertently makes his own demons (which I think is a road we’ve kind of been down on before with Iron Man but it seems to work pretty well here) and also dealing with the psychological consequences of the heroic “save and fall” that Tony Stark pulled off in the fourth Iron Man film, The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble). This is all good stuff and there’s enough good writing on show to tie everything from Tony Stark’s past screen exploits together in a neat and appropriate package, which is just what Shane Black does.

I think the main problems, for me, were the deadly dull bits between the strong dialogue sequences and the sometimes not so kick ass action sequences... and also the ongoing issue that you need to keep having foes who are able to take on Iron Man and try to get them as credible as you can within the silver screen edition of the Marvel Universe that nobody questions it. It was always done fairly “real world” by using people with technically brilliant weapons or weaponised armour in the first two movies, but here Shane Black takes a more organic, “more human than human” approach with ex Neighbours TV soap star Guy Pearce playing a scientist who has invented a drug to give people the ability to grow limbs back (The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man really needs to work with this guy, I think) and also to turn them into either super-powered villains or, in some cases, powerful bombs. I guess this could have been handled credibly in a kind of “4-colour-Cronenberg” kind of way but, alas, the flashy, orange CGI work and over the top nature of the super-powered beings in this did seem to scratch a little at the credible surface of even a movie that has characters such as Iron Man running around in them. I guess, since The Avengers, all bets are off when it comes to credibility of the antagonists but I would have preferred him to face a more realistic set of villains in this one. I guess I can see why they felt they needed to do this, though.

The editing was something I lament on this movie, especially in a long battle towards the end of the story (which is where most of the action is located anyway... towards the end of the film). I did have trouble following the speed of the cuts and found placing the shots which flashed before my eyes in this sequence into some kind of coherent order fairly challenging, to be fair. As a result, the final fight in the movie didn’t really hit any emotional high points for me (which are often best done in isolation anyway) and I did find some of the footage kinda incomprehensible as I tried to follow along. And despite that, I still feel the movie needed about 20 - 30 minutes of judicious pruning in certain areas when it comes down to it. A shorter, tighter film may have worked better.

Another weakness of these particular Marvel branded movies is, of course, the consistency of the musical scores...

Marvel have done a heck of a lot of things right in the last five years or so when it comes to the specific subset of the Marvel Universe films they are bringing out as opposed to films series like Spider-Man and X-Men from other studios. They’ve gone for mostly great scripts, well thought out choices of director (Kenneth Branagh for Thor for instance, was one of a few strokes of genius) and they are inhabiting all these movies with a strong set of well established, “serious” actors who lend a certain amount of weight to their roles and who are not, as often happens, ignoring the ensemble nature of the way the characters all need to work together. This is all good stuff, of course.

Why then, are they completely compromising all that by not giving each subset of heroes who make up The Avengers their own, string of signature scores? Take this particular sequence of Iron Man films, for instance. We’ve had three stand alone Iron Man movies (not including The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers within this example, because it just makes the water muddier when it comes to music) and three separate composers scoring each one with completely different leitmotifs for the characters. Seriously, people, we had Ramin Djawadi, John Debney on the second and now Brian Tyler on the third... all of them are excellent composers and all of them have done brilliant and appropriate scores for these films... but none of them match up with each other. Why?

The only stab Marvel made at musical continuity was getting Captain America: The First Avenger composer Alan Silvestri back for The Avengers, but this didn’t do much justice for the Hulk, Thor and Iron Man characters in terms of melodic value and binding the characters together with an integration of those specific melodies. So Iron Man Three does, unfortunately, continue the trend of completely ignoring the musical continuity of the character in every way except style (there’s usually a lot of percussion in the Iron Man movies, for sure).

Having moaned about all that, though, and my general dissatisfaction with certain elements of the film... there are still a lot of really great scenes throughout the running time which are more than worth paying the price of admission for. I’ve already mentioned Ben Kingsley’s scene stealing performance as... well, anyway, his few but amazing scenes. In addition to this you have the Tony/Pepper scenes still fairly sharp and witty in the dialogue and you also have a teenage character for some of the movie who really reminds us that, although it’s never really in great shape, Tony Stark does have a heart and is a real human being who is trying to do the right thing. And I still love the character’s arrogance and the way that his self awareness of his personality informs the audience that you can’t take this guy at what’s showing on the surface... a real testament to Rob Downey Jr’s continued excellence at playing this, and many other, characters.

So I’m done with this one. It’s not the best but even so, it’s a heck of a ride and although you might find yourself dissatisfied with certain sequences, there’s a hell of a lot of good stuff on show and the director, production team and studio should feel proud that they’ve been able to deliver an above average super-hero movie again. It’s not that easy to do.

One last thing... this film continues the trend of the movies having an additional scene after the last drop of the end credits play out... and it’s pretty cool and I was pleased to see one of my favourite living actors sharing some screen time with Robert Downey Jr again. Let’s just say that, if you were a fan of the last movie starring this character... you will want to stay seated for this last, little sequence.

Doctor Who - Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS

Fiddling While TARDIS Vernes

Doctor Who - Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS
Airdate: 27th April 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: New spoilers waiting to be discovered as you journey to the centre of this article.

For a long time now, Doctor Who fans around the world have been given occasional little audio and visual glimpses of other parts of The Doctor’s famous time and space travelling machine, TARDIS, besides the main console room which features in a lot, although not nearly all, of the stories. But rarely are we given a real chance to see what the rest of the TARDIS is properly like and even just the sound of the cloister bell, a famous chime in the Doctor Who universe, is enough to light up fans' eyes en masse (first used in Tom Baker’s last story Logopolis and still used in the Matt Smith series more than it ever was in the past, strangely enough).

So it was with much trepidation that I embarked on this episode with the Jules Verne inspired title of Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS... after 50 years of not having enough budget to show us much else of The Doctor’s good vessel (in spite of at least one Hartnell story taking place in its entirety on board this ship). I was really not wanting to see much else of it in all honesty.

Moffat does like to change things and tinker with the established myth of Doctor Who more than The Meddling Monk and sometimes that can get quite interesting (when confined to certain acceptable parameters) and other times that can just seem quite arrogant, unnecessary and, frankly, leaving a downright tragic aftertaste in the mouth. I’m dreading what is going to be revealed in four weeks time at the end of the current series, for example... he’s already made some horrible references to The Doctor’s name in some scenes that really didn’t work in the last series and onward and... well... let’s all wait and see.

So, did the episode which was advertised to be an exploration of some of the parts of the TARDIS we’ve never seen before prove to be an interesting and respectful look at the space/time vehicle of this beloved show’s history or... did it fall flat? My expectations were not really going too much in either direction, well... with the exception of aforementioned trepidation, that is... and I can say now that this episode proved to be...

Okayish.

There was, as I’m sure a lot of us were all expecting, a lot of running down corridors and some of the rooms (and you really didn’t get to see much more than the corridors for most of the running time) looked like cheap CGI backgrounds as opposed to actual sets... but the episode certainly wasn’t anywhere disrespectful to the shows of the past and, considering it was presumably the “bottle neck”* episode of the current series, it was mostly quite entertaining too (Bottle neck episode is a term for an episode of a TV show which is deliberately “written cheap” to allow money allocated to be used for other episodes when unexpected costs happen. These episodes frequently feature few sets and often a lot of flashbacks to previous episodes, to the extent that many people also refer to them as “flashback episodes”. Many shows have them and they’re often not very hard to spot.).

This episode offered a few tantalising glimpses of things every fan would want to explore further, such as a Gallifreyan library with a certain book charting The History Of The Time War which gave Clara a mini moment of epiphany in regards to The Doctor’s name and his place in the universe, so to speak. Unfortunately, the episode also managed to cop out on all these little things because the way our heroes got out of this week's story was, frankly, a big time and space reset button which erased the versions of our characters out of history after they’d saved themselves from earlier folly, thus rendering the majority of the characters (at least the important ones) without a memory of the episode. So that was a bit pointless.

And, yes... we got to hear the cloister bell again. Briefly.

Nevertheless, although there was some hellish imagery used in the story, there were also some wonderful, visual delights, with a very diverse set of colour palettes used from scene to scene... especially the moment when The Doctor and Clara went from running through orange and green lit corridors to the side of a “snarling” plateau which used colouring more reminiscent of the Pertwee era. Pertwee, in fact, was also heard in this episode... as were a few Doctors and companions, since the removal of a panel on the TARDIS console triggered a series of sound bytes from the shows past, starting with a sample of The Doctor’s grandchild Susan Foreman (as played by Carole Ann Ford) explaining the TARDIS acronym from the very first episode of the very first story, An Unearthly Child. 

And talking of children, and possible grandchildren, it was also nice to have a glimpse, once again, of Melody Pond’s (aka River Song’s) cot from the A Good Man Goes To War episode too. Nice touch and one is still wondering, or at least I am, if Clara will eventually be revealed as the daughter of River and The Doctor at some point... or is she a future incarnation of The Doctor’s Daughter perhaps, ripped from David Tennant’s DNA in his third series as The Doctor. That’s another of my many theories this week... I’m hoping Moffat’s got something a little more clever planned for his big reveal though.

It wasn’t a fantastic story, it has to be said, but it certainly wasn’t a big letdown like the five episodes which comprised the first part of “Series Seven” were either, so that’s okay. It kept me interested and it really feels like the producers of the show are working up to something big. Now I’ve been twice bitten by that already with this series over the last couple of years so I’m not going to get my hopes up just yet... especially with Moffat now threatening that this year will somehow change the show.

What I will do, though, is look forward to next weeks Victorian London shenanigans with the return of my favourite lesbian Silurian, my favourite Sontaran and Bond/Avengers gal Diana Rigg in it. Wish I could leap seven days into the future and check it out now.

Olympus Has Fallen

Stabracadabra!

Olympus Has Fallen
USA 2013
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Very slight spoilers lurking stealthily to jump out and stab you up!

In his new film Die Hard, Bruce Willis plays an action hero who is trapped in a building with a group of terrorists... woah.

Wait, wait. Okay... sorry folks. For a minute there I got my movies mixed up. Let me start this review again.

In his new film Olympus Has Fallen, Gerard Butler plays an action hero who is trapped in a building with a group of terrorists.

Yep, that’s nailed it good.

For anybody still in any doubt... yes, Olympus Has Fallen bears a similar structure and stimulates the exact same thrills that the original Die Hard movie did. The simplistic plots to both are uncannily alike and when I tweeted less than an hour before going to see this new one that I was just going off to see Die Hard 6: Today Is A Good Day For Olympus To Fall, I really wasn’t expecting the similarities to be so blatant and while I think the original Die Hard has a lot of edge over Olympus Has Fallen, in both its witty visual and musical language and, also, its good humour, the slightly more straightforward Olympus Has Fallen is also quite entertaining and is actually quite competently made.

That being said, the film doesn’t quite satisfy enough at the end.

Similarly, a film I liked years ago by the same director, The Replacement Killers, also suffers from the same lack of over the top panache in the “end game” stakes but then again, that might not be what the director was aiming for with this one. And while it’s far from a perfect action movie, it’s certainly very well crafted... not particularly in composition terms but certainly in the editing. It’s not the jumpy MTV generation style of visual jiggery pokery you might be expecting from an action fest of this magnitude and there are some nice, fluid and longer shots amidst the “dazed and confused” style of editing going on in some of the more insanely loud sequences in the movie. And at least the shots all seem to match up to each other.

What I’m trying to say here, I guess, is that the action sequences, of which there are many, won’t leave you confused and wondering about what’s just happened... it’s all very well put together and easy to understand. They’ve started getting a little better at this kind of stuff again just lately in Hollywood it seems, as opposed to five or so years ago when you couldn’t follow hardly anything in these types of action jamborees.

Olympus Has Fallen is a phrase used for when The White House has been “taken” and it’s certainly been taken in no uncertain terms in this movie (a group of terrorists with a particular set of skills, no doubt). Aaron Eckhart, an actor I rate quite highly in modern Hollywood, does an excellent job of playing a president who is taken hostage with his staff in his own bunker in The White House and Gerard Butler, who is not such a slouch himself, plays the action hero with a tragic link to the president’s recent past life and is the “man of the match” and “on the scene” when it comes down to being the only “weapon” that stands between the nuclear destruction of the USA and North Korean terrorists. Although one of the ways he does this, and there seems to be an abundance of this kind of action in this particular movie, is to run around stabbing terrorists in the head.

I’m not kidding. That seems to be almost a mini theme of this movie. Stabbing people in the head. I’m not sure you can even do that all that efficiently, can you? I understand a high speed bullet will go through a person’s skull but surely a blade weapon which isn’t launched at “deadly miles per hour” is just going to glance of the skull of a person, isn’t it?

Apparently not, it would seem, and the person who knows this the best is Gerard Butler... who will basically stab anything in the head that moves in this film. Now, yes, I know he’s got to be all stealthy and not fire off any shots lest the terrorists know he’s there and “shhhh... be wery, wery quiet, I’m hunting rabbit”... and all that but, seriously, there’s more head penetration action in this flick than Deep Throat. What can it all mean? A disturbing trend setter perhaps.

Anyway, Gerard is obviously the man for the job and we watch as he runs about the floors of The White House, getting a couple of people to safety and figuring out how to get into the bunker before atomic death reaches Washington in fairly more realistic way than Martian death rays or giant reptiles. He’s ably supported by a brilliant cast, too, including the aforementioned Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster and the much wasted Rhada MIichell as “the wife of the action hero”, who is there to provide the odd poignant moment while Mr. Butler’s character takes a shot (in the head) at redemption to make up for the time six months prior to these events when he fumbled saving the life of the President’s wife.

And that’s what this movie is about. Redemption!

Well, okay, redemption and, you know, stabbing people in the head really a lot. It’s about that too.

I have to say that the character set ups in this one, dead Presidential wife, teaching the President’s son all the nooks and crannys of The White House etc are really kinda obvious, but at least what’s on the written page is executed extremely well and this extends to Trevor Morris’ excellent score which is appropriately flag waving and percussive and matches the on-screen fireworks pretty well... although it does get buried under the sound effects quite a lot, I'm afraid. I’d like to hear this as a stand alone score away from the film but, sadly, so far it’s only available as a download and not on a proper CD... so I probably won’t get the opportunity. Still, if we’re lucky, somebody might release it at some point.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about Olympus Has Fallen. If you like the Die Hard kinds of action movies and you want to see one that succeeds in all the areas a movie like that needs to succeed in and which presses all the right buttons, then this movie is it and you won’t regret giving it some of your time. That being said, it’s not something I’d probably look at again as opposed to the Bruce Willis films, which I probably will give a spin every ten years or so. But, again, having said that... I’d be fine with queuing up for a sequel and seeing how that goes. If explosions and bloody mayhem and err... head stabbing... are your thing, held up by some solid acting from all the principle cast (and the various people being stabbed in the head), then you should probably get down to your cinema to see this one while you can.

Doctor Who - Hide

Ticket To Hide

Doctor Who - Hide
Airdate: 20th April 2013. 
UK. BBC1

Warning: This review will be haunted by quite big spoilers.

Now that’s more like it. Proper classic BBC ghost story time and, very much classic Who. And we even had a return visit from an old friend... sort of.

Okay, so this is the kind of thing that British TV used to do so well in the 1970s... with various M. R. James adaptations and shows like The Stone Tape (which I still haven't seen) and The Omega Factor. In fact, this weeks story could almost have been a classic episode of that great TV sci-fi scarefest of the late seventies, Sapphire And Steel... except with Matt Smith and Jenna Louise-Coleman replacing David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.

Now, as usual for a lot of these kinds of things... the writers will spend the first third or more of the show building up the sheer supernatural scariness of the seeming plight of whoever the main protagonists happen to be, before tearing it all down and sewing it up as either a) some kind of time window thingy or b) some kind of alien creature thingy. As it happens, though, while I was expecting it to be very much of the first possible solution to this weeks ghost problem... and I was trying to work out which of this week’s two leading ladies was actually going to turn out to be the ghost that was haunting them all due to the intervention of The Doctor and Clara... it turned out that the writer had cross-pollinated a bit of both of my expected two possible outcomes and gone for a not quite as thrilling but certainly interesting blend of the two.

On hand to please the drooling fans and to give the young psychic lady, Emma Grayling, a helping boost to open up a tiny wormhole in time was the old friend I mentioned earlier... the old friend being a blue crystal from Metebelis 3. Long in the tooth fans of the show... and by that I mean very ancient people like myself... will possibly remember the planet first showing up in the Jon Pertwee era story The Green Death, with Jo Grant keeping a blue crystal from the planet where The Doctor picked it up. She takes it with her at the end of the story, when she leaves the show, but sends it back to The Doctor in time for it to be an important plot device in the last proper Jon Pertwee story, Planet Of The Spiders (featuring the titular Spiders of Metebelis). So it’s good to see the famed blue crystal again and one wonders if, being this is the fiftieth year of the show’s broadcast, it might pop up again a little later in the year, since it’s such a famous prop for the show.

The atmosphere in Hide was evoked very well with all manner of spooky shivers on hand with the only real fumble being, in my opinion, a quite overt reference to the classic 1963 Robert Wise film The Haunting... which is my all time favourite horror movie and which is based on an equally chilling novel by Shirley Jackson called The Haunting of Hill House (check it out if you’ve not read/seen it but leave the 1999 remake alone while you’re about it). The famous hand holding scene lifted quite ineffectually from this, I have to say, is something I’ve mentioned before, I’m sure, in relation to the executive producer of this show, Steven Moffat. His writing style of “the scary thing is already happening or has happened and you didn’t notice it” kind of spooky element is very much something he tries, and often succeeds, to emulate and although he didn’t actually write tonight’s episode... one has to wonder if he didn’t ask for that specific lift from The Haunting to be put in there.

Apart from that wrong step, which frankly would have been a lot better with a lot less lighting and a lot more ghost/time travel logic behind it in terms of direct aftermath, the rest of the episode is all a big thumbs up from me in terms of top notch writing, blistering acting performances (I want to see these two new characters again) and some nice editing and shot composition... not that I have particularly big thumbs, mind you. There was a particularly nice lighting effect (or more likely computer manipulated desaturation and recolouring effect) whenever The Doctor was in the “pocket universe” for example, which really was easy on the eye. Was very impressed by it, I must say. There was even a kind of time-travelling variant of the photographs that David Warner and Gregory Peck were having so much trouble with in The Omen, but that worked so well that it was only when I was sitting back and writing this review just now that I realised the connection. Good stuff.

And Murray Gold’s score, although I think it had a lot of old stuff tracked in, also had some nice strong statements and variants of the Eleventh Doctor sub-theme rattling around at key moments and I must confess my foot was definitely tapping through a lot of the episode. Still looking forward to some nice CD score releases from this season from Silva Screen at some point later on in the year.

There was also some nice moments with the TARDIS and Clara’s relationship going on as “the old girl” learns to start trusting Clara a little, not that I’d give that much stock, to be honest. I still think Clara could either be the next incarnation of The Doctor (if Tennant doesn’t ‘re-land that role’) or quite possibly the new nemesis of The Doctor... or an old one... The Rani, The Master... when is that timelord pocket watch going to come out?

And I don’t think there’s much else to say about this one, to be honest. If I wasn’t quite as satisfied by the show’s denouement as I’d hoped I’d be, I was still certainly taken a little unawares by it (just a little though) and it was still interesting enough to hold my attention. And when the end logic of both mini solutions of this weeks ghostly apparition were both revealed to be all about love, then that’s always enough to get my heart behind a show. Love rules! I like it.

Okay, so all good stuff. Next week’s episode looks like it could go either way with an exciting journey to the centre of the TARDIS.. let’s wait and see how that one turns out, shall we?