Die Another Day

Frosty Reception

Die Another Day
2002 UK/USA
Directed by Lee Tamahori
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

I looked at this again the other week and thought to myself, once more, that it was such a shame that the remarkable Bond actor Pierce Brosnan had to exit the series with such a terrible movie. I am looking back on it now and I’m still stunned as to why half of the decisions on this film were made.

Okay, so lets get started on this mess.

Unlike the previous three Brosnan films, all of which had very strong pre-credits sequences, Die Another Day starts off with what seems to me like an overly dull, couldn’t-care-less series of action sequences, ultimately involving hovercrafts in a jungle setting. It still doesn’t hold my interest and as Bond is caught by his enemies at the end of this sequence (which is a first for the series I think), we go into a truly nasty opening credits sequence which actually functions as part of the narrative (again a first) and tells the story of Bond being tortured for over a year. It’s kinda ugly and, well, kinda unremarkable really. And just to add insult to injury, there’s an opening song by Madonna with truly unhelpful sound dropouts (done deliberately) which is okay, perhaps, as a song in its own right, but truly not really a Bond song. I don’t know what they were thinking when they accepted this as their song on the film but I don’t think the good of the movie came into it. Probably more about dollars and pounds.

This was the 40th anniversary film for the series and there are a lot of references to Bond’s past movie exploits in it, but it all seems to have been put together in a really clumsy manner and it seems more about getting everything in than truly paying homage to the film’s distinguished ancestry. They even throw in the ornithology book that Ian Fleming looked at to get the name of his super spy but, they’re not exactly subtle in doing it.

Everything about this film seems unbelievably over the top and, even the one saving grace of a fine set of actors doing their best with the material they have, does not go nearly far enough towards saving this picture. Even Brosnan himself, still completely in character, has to deliver lines of dialogue which are really just a big long series of polished one-liners. The dialogue and sexual innuendo had been creeping up quite a lot in the last couple of films but they still kept it to manageable and somewhat Bondian levels. Here they over indulge themselves and the consequence is that you can’t take anything anyone says with any degree of seriousness. It’s all just a knowing quip as far as the script goes.

The thing which really helps ruin this film, though, is the over the top science fiction aspect to it. There’s often been an element of sci-fi in Bond but in this one he has an invisible car. I’ll say that again so you can let that meander around in your brain for a while and figure out a reaction...

Bond has an invisible car!

Yeah, I know, I know. It’s all based on stealth technology, I’m sure, but I really don’t think this has a place here and the special effects are such that you really can’t see the thing. Seriously, whether this stuff was in the realms of possibility or not at the time, the inclusion of this kind element just knocks the film’s credibility for six and really doesn’t do it any favours. He’s not Wonder Woman with her invisible jet... he’s James Bond.  And, by the way, an invisible jet is easy to get away with when you’re a character existing in a world which allows for both men and Gods. Here it’s all scientified and, basically, just mocks itself.

And, of course, in addition to this... Bond can stop his heart at will.

No seriously. Want me to repeat that one too?

Bond can stop his own heart just by thinking about it.

He uses this technique to create a distraction when he’s trying to escape his own people. But it’s preposterous... and it’s not how it should be. He’s not Derek Flint. Derek Flint was a spoof character and, as such, can live in a world where he is so far advanced he can stop his own heart. James Bond is not that character and it’s yet another blow to the believability of this movie. I really don’t know why the writers and producers thought they could get away with this stuff. I remember coming home from the cinema at the time and thinking, “Wow. I’d almost rather be watching Octopussy than that.” Seriously, it is that bad.

Which is a shame really because there’s a lot of talent both on and off the screen in this one but... they just can’t conquer a preposterous script, I’m afraid. And I really could have done without the terrible joke scene near the end were it appears Bond and Miss Moneypenny are finally “getting it on”. Awful, embarrassing stuff.

Of course, one of the main talents in the crew is composer David Arnold, who really knocked it out of the park with some of the best music in the Bond series in the last two films. Here, he really does try but the music seems a little less stimulating than before and even though he throws the Bond Is Back musical phrase in there and also the famous bass line from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the music is mostly a dull affair and this is reflected in the compact disc stand alone listen too, as far as I’m concerned.

And that’s about it, I’m afraid. I really haven’t got a whole lot left to say about this one. Die Another Day is a terrible Bond movie and both Brosnan and his audience deserved much better than this shabby treatment. One to avoid if you want to remember Brosnan as one of the better Bond actors.

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

Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain

The Eyes Have It

Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain
by Will Murray 
writing as Kenneth Robeson
Altus Press 
ISBN: 978-1618270825

Death’s Dark Domain is the fourth of Wil Murray’s second wave of writing further Doc Savage adventures as the new Kenneth Robeson - the pen name traditionally used for Doc Savage stories, most of which were written by Lester Dent - whose style Murray emulates perfectly.

This is not, of course, to say Murray’s mimicking of Dent’s style is not a creative endeavour. The trick is to come up with your own twists and spin on the Doc Savage legend while utilising that base style to ensure your own “yarn spinning” has some credibility within that particular universe and Murray is a master craftsman at this kind of work.

This Doc Savage adventure has a lot of tension and weight to it, since it’s set right after the events of one of the original Doc Savage adventures, Fortress Of Solitude. Yeah, that’s right, Doc had a Fortress Of Solitude in the Arctic many years before a certain other famous character in comics poached the concept (and his first name is even Clark too... ring any bells?). Also, fans of the Doc Savage series will know that Fortress Of Solitude was a very important novel in the Doc Savage canon. For... not only did it point out a mistake that Doc Savage had made in keeping an arsenal of “too advanced to fall into human hands” super weapons in his Fortress, thus providing the carrot for the lead villain on that particular story, but it also introduced the only villain ever to appear twice in the Doc Savage series (of which there were over 180 novels).

The thing is about Doc Savage is, he’s pretty much invincible. I only ever knew him to lose a situation once (in the very last of his original adventures after the title was cancelled, Up From Earth’s Centre... presumably because Dent wanted people to write in to the publishers to complain so they could see what happens next?) and he has always commanded an attitude and strength of character wherein you know that, if Doc Savage is on the case, he’s going to solve the groovy mystery (always explainable by science, with the one exception being, again, that very last published story of his early adventures) and this leaves the writer with something of a problem, if you look at it in this way. It means that every foe Doc comes up against... he only comes up against the once. He defeats them and he moves onto the next adventure. Except in one very special circumstance... in Fortress Of Solitude, the villain known only as John Sunlight, who is extremely smart and not to be taken for granted, almost as smart as Doc Savage himself, wanders off at the end and is “presumed” to be eaten by a stray polar bear.

However, that very same year, a further Doc Savage adventure, The Devil Genghis, put paid to that theory when John Sunlight returned. It’s an interesting development and I wish Dent would have brought the character back for further stories but perhaps he felt that this would wear down Doc’s credibility as an adventuresome superman too much. Who knows?

In Death’s Dark Domain, Doc and three of his crew (Monk, Ham and Long Tom) are still clearing up after the damage done in Fortress Of Solitude and it’s clear that they aren’t taking Sunlight’s supposed death for granted. In fact, Sunlight’s long shadow is cast over the first two thirds or so of this book like a spectre haunting Doc and his crew. It’s like they’re all expecting Sunlight to show his hand at any moment and this gives the writing an interesting colouring. Is John Sunlight in this one? And if he is, does that wreck continuity with the later story, The Devil Genghis? Well I’m really not going to tell you, you’ll have to find out for yourself but... certainly something of Sunlight’s presence is felt among the pages of this gripping tale, but it doesn’t necessarily come from the direction you think. And that’s all I’m saying about the Sunlight connection here.

The book starts off well and sets up the usual inexplicable phenomenon which Doc always gets around to explaining at the end of the novel in scientific terms. In this case, a darkness is causing the odd person to wake up supposedly dead, only to find that he or she has been turned into a pair of floating eyeballs. There are also ferocious, unseen cyclops wandering the country in which this is set and also much talk of vampires... indeed, Mr. Bram Stoker’s astonishing literary creation even gets a shout out here, and it’s unusual for a Doc Savage tale to identify a fictional character quite this blatantly.

One of my favourite characters, Pat Savage, gets a look in at the start of the novel but, alas, doesn’t join in on the adventure proper... again, I won’t say why. But the tale does feature a strong female character, who’s very much a mystery herself and... oh wait... I shouldn’t say too much about her either. but she’s pretty interesting and Doc is throughly disapproving of her actions in certain parts of the novel.

Murray weaves his tale with his usual brilliant pacing and utterly compelling storyline, which really does read like its just another novel sized story from the original pulp magazine. The action never lets up and he also uses elements that were ahead of the time in the thirties but which we can look back to now with a nostalgic reference.... something that Dent did in the original tales without understanding the effect, perhaps, that it would have on future generations of readers. Here, for example, Will Murray introduces a theremin as one of the elements in the mystery... which really brightened my reading experience because, well, I really love theremins (both the musical instrument and the story of the inventor behind them).

What more can I say about Death's Dark Domain? This book is terrific. If Doc Savage is your thing, and if you’re bothering to read this review I’m guessing he is, then you really won’t be disappointed with this blistering tale of the start of a war aggravated by the actions of John Sunlight in Fortress Of Solitude. Seriously good fun and Doc is seen at his most serious. Can’t wait to get onto the next one in the series. Well worth every penny.

The Lickerish Quartet

Radley Of The Lost Arc

The Lickerish Quartet
1970 Italy/USA/West Germany
Directed by Radley Metzger
Arrow Video Blu Ray A/B/C &
DVD Region 0 Dual Edition

Okay. So why I found myself finally getting into The Lickerish Quartet is because I was in Fopp records and they were selling Arrow Video’s BluRay/DVD Dual Edition for £6 and, since I’d never actually gotten around to seeing a Radley Metzger branded sexploitation movie before, I figured I might as well start with this one. I’m very glad I did because now I’m hooked. Anyone expecting a mere piece of exploitation cinema from this one should think again... this movie is the Last Year In Marienbad of sexploitation movies and I can’t believe the critics weren’t a lot kinder to it when it first came out.

The film starts off with a quote from Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search Of An Author and I groaned a bit at that, not because it’s the only work by Pirandello that I’ve read, but because I’ve seen Pirandello referenced on this work in movies and books so many times and the connection is usually... well, pretentious and tenuous at best. What I didn’t realise, until I was about a quarter of an hour into the movie, is how appropriate in a way this play is to the work that Metzger has plotted out here.

The film starts off with a well worn black and white pornographic movie being projected in a living room while an aristocratic husband and wife (there are no character names and really only about four characters in the entire film, give or take a couple of scenes and some variations) make comments and wonder about the kinds of people who star in these things, while the son looks on with contempt. The husband and wife are played by the always watchable Frank Wolff and Erika Remberg. The wife’s son is played by Paolo Turco. Wolff would tragically commit suicide about a year after this film was released but he’s always an actor I’ve liked. The opening sequence is quite long and there’s a fair bit of interesting dialogue... and that’s because the director needs certain key things to stick in your mind.

As the film plays we slowly zoom out and the full colour sides of the frame infringe upon the visual space. Then the sex film breaks and, after a shot of the projector, continues again. What happens next is amazing. As we get our first glimpses of the characters, the director uses a split screen, contrasted against black, to slide portions of frame of the husband and wife into shot in the space where the coloured sides of the shot housing the 4:3 aspect ratio of the black and white porn film were... and this is just the beginning.

All through the film we are treated to really quite stylish edits, juxtaposed against long tracking shots and zooms. Visual metaphors such as one of those tall, thin, drinking ducks is used as a cross cut for sexual intercourse, resting in it’s drink and motionless at one point as a metaphor for post-orgasm afterglow. There are also various little flash forwards and backwards, which reminded me of the cinema of Nicholas Roeg, but which have no audio fanfare as a distraction and this allows the quick cuts to creep up on you totally unawares and happen sometimes before you even had time to consciously register them before you’re thrust back into the scene you were in.

At first it just seems like a confident director and editor playing with their film but, as the story develops, you realise that the people involved in this movie are actually using the film to shape the story themselves... although the story itself disappears due to... wait I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

When the husband, wife and son go to see a Wall Of Death act in a carnival, the main girl on the motorcycle is the dead spit of the main girl in the pornographic film they’ve been watching in the opening sequence... so for a laugh they invite her back (she is played by the very “easy on the eye” actress Silvana Venturelli) to see her reaction when they show her the film...

But wait. Something is wrong. When they play the film back for her, the lead character’s face is no longer visible and... that’s when things start getting interesting and more like Pirandello in the execution of the film. The edges between the reality of our four protagonists and the film they were watching becomes blurred. Plus, what’s all the footage of a GI in the war liberating a prostitute and her son about? Well it all makes a little more sense as the film continues on its way.

As the weekend in the mansion home of our original three protagonists wears on, their guest seduces all three of them in turn and has sex with them at various locations. Frank Wolff’s library room is a perfect example of the sheer visual and creative flair of the director, as the floor is decorated with blown up dictionary definitions and the guest and the husband throw out the books as they ponder the true value of words and knowledge They then strip off and make love on the floor which, as they have sex, you realise is all definitions of sexual words... it’s all pretty amazing, actually.

There’s lots of good stuff in this movie all the way through. For example, a story being told simultaneous to a showing of a porn film is intercut with the camera space travelling and exploring a large painting to re-enforce the words in a not dissimilar way to the great Russian director Andre Tarkovsky would use the camera to explore art in many of his movies.

But this is minor compared to the structure of the movie, which slowly becomes more elastic and unravels before your very eyes...

At one point, for instance, Wolff makes a comment about his guests hair and she tells him he shouldn’t have mentioned it. The film, which is just about still our objective reality, suddenly rewinds at fast speed (as Wolff’s character is so fond of doing with his porn films) and replays the reality with the comment excised... this is all really interesting stuff and the movie just starts getting more and more surrealistic from there as Metzger and his crew start playing around with the blurring of identity between fictional and real characters. This brings us to a point at the end of the movie where that original opening sequence with the porn film and the conversation around it now becomes crucial to take any kind of understanding away from the film at all... even if the final destination of the various characters and our perception of them takes us to exactly where we have started to suspect we are going by the end of the running time.

The film is beautifully shot, has some interesting acting styles, is wonderfully edited, is colourful and vibrant to the eye and it’s all matched by a gorgeous score by Italian composer Stelvio Cipriani. I think the wordless vocals which pepper the soundtrack like little breaths of gold syrup are probably supplied by the famed Edda Dell’Orso... but that’s just a guess since the IMDB has absolutely no idea (she did a lot of this stuff uncredited, which is about what you’d expect from a solo artist within an orchestra or choir, to be fair).

And that’s all I really want to say about this film, I think. It is a sexploitation movie, it’s true, but with Metzger the barriers between exploitation and high art are blurred and broken down in much the same way as the four characters in this movie are slowly transformed into something both much more and much less than themselves. There’s a fair bit of nudity, to be fair, but I’m certainly not complaining about that and it really shouldn’t put you off watching this one. I was truly dazzled by this movie and I think it’s fair to say that it’s not what I was expecting. I really do have to track down some more of this writer/director’s movies now, if I can get them uncut, because I think this director deserves some of my time. A definite recommendation from me, especially if you like films which dazzle in terms of the way a shot is designed and edited. Truly great stuff.

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (La Vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2)

Torrents Of A Labia

Blue Is The Warmest Colour
aka La Vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2
2013 France/Belgium/Spain
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
Playing at UK cinemas now.

La Vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2 is known over here as Blue Is The Warmest Colour, the title of the original graphic novel, Le Bleu Est Une Couleur Chaude, on which it was based... although I understand the writer of that, Julie Maroh, is not too happy with the way the movie version turned out. This is possibly understandable since the summary I just read of the story deals with a long relationship which ends with drug addiction and death. So if anyone is expecting the movie to be like the comic, you may be a bit disappointed with it.

Now I didn’t know much about this movie going in, other than it was three hours long, had a long lesbian scene in it which was quite gruelling to shoot and that the film, as a whole, wasn’t very pleasant to the two lead actresses, Léa Seydoux who plays the blue haired Emma and Adèle Exarchopoulos, who plays Adèle. Although it’s essentially a two hander with two very watchable performances by these actresses, Adèle is the real main protagonist and it’s through her eyes that we see the story of the film’s central relationship and it’s her story we are following.

Now, I have to say, I was expecting much more on the visual level, seeing as the posters released have all been quite neatly designed, but the film is more naturalistic than I was hoping for in terms of no blatantly artificial or stylised framing that I could make out and a heck of a lot of handheld camera work too. It’s not in any way incompetent on a visual level, far from it... but for me I was expecting something within the realms of Kieslowski or Tarkovsky and, instead, got something which was perhaps a little more reminiscent of early 70s Hollywood film-making than what I’d expect from a European director.

Of course, the haphazard editing and absolutely minimal use of music (a couple of very brief non-diegetic cues and source music when needed) means that there’s no possibility of the visual design intruding or acting as a filter to engagement either and I did find that, although the movie is pretty much a full three hours (oh, yeah, alright then, 179 minutes... but it’s pretty close), I didn’t find myself once getting bored and it was over almost before I knew it. I’d still prefer a stronger visual design myself, though, and the muted colours weren’t working for me so much.

The director was interesting with what he was  doing with transitions both visually and in terms of sound design, though. Quite often we’d cut from a shot with one or two characters in isolation to one or two characters in the context of a crowd. We then start re-approaching that character and singling them out of their surroundings and contextualising them from the hubub of what’s going on around them... be that a protest march, a nursery school classroom or a dance performance. It also allows the director to do with sound the same kind of thing that Kurosawa did in the battle scene in Ran and the snow lady scene in The Blizzard section of Dreams... and that is he uses a roar of sound, be it a crowd of people or dance music, to shock you into that transition, which usually goes from a moment of self reflection or post-coital reverie into “loud and chaotic” without notice. This caught me out a couple of times because I was very tired when I saw this movie.

The sound design in general is all kinds of fun on this one, I have to say... especially in the sex scenes. A lot of the time the volume and presence of the sounds created are, in the parlance of our time, turned up to 11 and it certainly gives the film a very stylistic feel to it in the accoustics department, at least, which goes some way to making up for the lack of strong visuals I reckon. But maybe that’s just me.

The real find of this movie, though, is the two actresses, who both have strong and likeable personalities. They carry the movie from the realm of being just so-so into something really worth taking a look at. Emma, the art student with the blue hair is almost channelling a young Oscar Levant in looks, in female form, and she comes across as a very strong presence in contrast to the wonderful character/actress Adèle... who is the wandering innocent of the film to some extent, although by the time the movie reaches its climax, you’ll soon come to realise that, despite crying her way through a third of the movie, she’s actually the stronger and more interesting character of the two. The girls work very well together (yes, even in those scenes) and, given all the post-Cannes shenanigans, which mark the first time the actresses in a film have been specifically named on the award along with the director... I would have to say that we very much have the director to thank for coaxing those performances out of them, I guess. Although where performance and direction blend is not something I’m that clued up about, I’m afraid.

Blue Is The Warmest Colour, then, is not the great visual confection that I was expecting when I sought this one out... but it is a really good movie, full of emotion and a certain quality of weight to the characters which makes for a really impressive and fulfilling viewing experience... which in my book makes for great entertainment. The film has only been out two weeks but already looks like it’s on its last performances over here. So if you want to catch it on the big screen... now would be the time to go.

The Omega Man

He Am Legend

The Omega Man
1971 USA
Directed by Boris Sagal
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Region B

As far as I can make out there have been, to date, four movie versions of Richard Matheson’s classic sci-fi/horror novel I Am Legend. The Last Man on Earth from 1964 (starring Vincent Price and reviewed here), The Omega Man (the subject of this review), I Am Legend (starring Will Smith) from 2007 and a straight to home video release, also from 2007, called I Am Omega. Of the four, I still haven’t got around to watching that last yet but I was gifted with a copy almost two years ago and it’s gaining traction and moving to the top of my “to watch” pile finally, you’ll be glad to know. Hoping to check that one out before the end of the year.

Matheson was reported to be unhappy with the Vincent Price version of his book but I’d have to say that, of the film adaptations I’ve seen of it, that first version is the one that’s closest to the novel. In the book the main protagonist is the sole survivor, kind of, of a virus that wipes out the world and either kills the rest of the population or turns them into vampires. And I mean vampires... proper blood sucking, daylight fearing vampires. The main protagonist spends most of his time hunting them out by day, banging stakes through their hearts and holing up at night.

The Price movie follows this pretty well, as far as I can remember, but if The Last Man On Earth is a version of I Am Legend that Matheson wasn’t happy with, I can’t even imagine what he made of The Omega Man. It’s here that I should go on record saying that, although I love all three movie versions of the book I’ve seen, The Omega Man is by far my favourite of them because it’s just plain, outright fun.

Starting off with Neville, the main protagonist played by Charlton Heston, riding around the city in the far future of... um... 1977, we hear Max Steiner’s theme from A Summer’s Place on the 8 track he puts in the car stereo... before he stops and spots something moving in one of the windows. He immediately stands up in his car, pulls a machine gun from the passenger seat, and opens fire at the window before driving off into the opening credits, with Ron Grainer’s haunting main titles playing over shots of him driving around the deserted city.

Charlton Heston was fast becoming the “go to” man for this kind of film which belongs as part of a collective pre-Star Wars science fiction strike, launched at cinema directly from Hollywood in the late sixties up to the mid-seventies. These films commonly projected cynical and depressing dystopian futures which were popular in their gritty depiction of a world that spiralled off into decay, or in this case, is the inherited fall out from an apocalyptic virus. Heston had recently proven himself suited to this kind of movie with his appearances in Planet Of The Apes and Beneath The Planet Of The Apes and would do so again, after this, with his turn as the main protagonist in Edward G. Robinson’s final film, Soylent Green. Actors such as Yul Brinner, James Caan and a various others were also getting good roles in similarly grim science fiction movies such as Westworld, The Ultimate Warrior, Rollerball, Silent Running and Logan’s Run (which was about the last of the cycle before Star Wars hit and changed the course of on-screen science-fiction forever).

The Omega Man firmly belongs in this camp and, as you may expect, Heston proves himself a pretty good actor as he slowly starts going mad and talking to himself before coming across a bunch of survivors who also have the plague... teaming up with them to find the cure made from in his own blood.

The film finishes both cynically and hopefully with a bittersweet conclusion that more or less mirrors the book without actually fully grasping the concept that the creatures Neville has been hunting for his own survival are actually more afraid of him than he is of them. To them he has become a legend, hence the title of the original novel.

The movie tries to do the novel in very basic structure, and does attempt to address that issue... but really only pays it lip service. The vampires have been replaced by light sensitive, virus infected mutants and any references to vampiric myth has been unequivocally vanquished from the movie. But still, it’s got guns, a babe (in Rosalind Cash) and some “right on” hippy values thrown in as a metaphor created by the fate that has befallen the human race. Like I said, it may not be accurate to the book but it is fun...

It’s also kinda groovy with Ron Grainers score really knocking it out of the park and clear across the world. Even from the opening titles you know this score is going to be special. Grainer was mostly known for TV work, writing familiar themes such as the opening titles music of The Prisoner and, as realised by Delia Derbyshire, the main signature theme for Doctor Who. But he did do a few movies and was known for bringing in some unusual instruments from his personal collection to go in certain scores, like the water bell on this score. The music in this is absolutely perfect and I don’t know why Grainer didn’t get a hell of a lot of other big Hollywood movie gigs off the back of this. I can’t believe it took something like 30 years just to get a limited edition CD of this released (now in it’s remastered and corrected second incarnation from the Film Score Monthly label). Some of the action cues sound a little like his music for The Prisoner but I think this should maybe just be attributed to his style and, frankly, I think this is one of the best scores written for a movie. Why they didn’t make a big thing of this one I’ll never know.

The action is fast and furious in places and the performances are all fine, especially Heston’s man living with himself and Anthony Zerbe as the head of “the family” of mutants, although his preachy, pseudo-religioso performance does start to grate a bit towards the end. There’s a strong Christ analogy at the finish which is not exactly subtle and that fits right in with the general zeitgeist of the time, methinks. Whether you like it or not, I think I’d have to peg The Omega Man as a sci-fi classic... a film that I’m likely to travel back to every few years (not like the other versions I’ve seen). Matheson probably wasn’t best pleased with this version, which does tend to subvert his original narrative into other concerns of the screenwriters, but if you can pull yourself away from the template of the original (and excellent) novel then I think, if you’re a fan of science fiction, you may find The Omega Man worth taking a good, long look at.

The World Is Not Enough

Enoughing Doing

The World Is Not Enough
1999 UK/USA
Directed by Michael Apted
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Warning: Okay, as unusual as it is for a Bond film to need 
any kind of spoiler warning, this one needs one, I think.

Right then. I think this may turn out to be a fairly short review because I don’t have much to say about it either way but, I think what we have here is, probably, the last great Bond movie. That is to say, the one where the producers, writers, actors, actresses, composer and director got the formula absolutely right and as it should be for Bond... for the very last time, to date.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not the best Bond movie since sliced bread and it’s not even, quite, the best of the Brosnan Bonds, I believe that honour goes to GoldenEye... but it certainly runs GoldenEye a close second and I believe one of the winning factors is that it gets the mix between action and the pauses for breath, character and plot development absolutely right once more, as it was with Brosnan’s debut movie. My main problem with Tomorrow Never Dies was that, spectacular as that movie was (and it really was), the action scenes kinda took over and it was too top heavy in that department. Here, Brosnan’s Bond is firmly back in 007 territory and playing a secret agent with an action bent... not just another action hero.

I knew Michael Apted from his work on Gorky Park and, though this movie is nowhere near as good as that one, he certainly injects a sense of real people into the proceedings, even though at least one of them has almost superhuman abilities... in the shape of Robert Carlisle’s Renard who, due to a bullet in his head which is shutting down parts of his brain, can feel no pain and is therefore not hampered by that in a fight. Actually, that character trait was originally earmarked for the blonde henchman in the previous film but it somehow got lost in the mix, so to speak.

There are some nice performances in here... Judy Dench, Samantha Bond, Michael Kitchen, Colin Salmon and Robbie Coltrane are all back in roles from previous movies, as is Desmond Llewellyn who is training his Q branch replacement, John Cleese. Actually, Cleese’s scenes don’t really work that well, it has to be said, but Llewellyn’s quips about retirement and his exit from his last scene here, drifting down and out of shot on an elevator while telling 007 to “always have an escape plan”, becomes doubly poignant when you know that, even though this was not pegged as being his swan song from the series just yet, he had died before the next movie got made and Cleese took over on that one too (though, to be honest, not even Llewellyn could have sold me on the idea of an invisible car, I reckon).

Now I remember seeing this at the cinema and watching the first part of the opening sequence in disappointment, as Brosnan escapes Douglas Fairbanks style from the window of an office using a henchman as ballast... but the sequence carries on to a debriefing session which is interrupted by, frankly, one of  the best action sequences in the series. Now I have a theory about this because, once the utterly brilliant speedboat chase is over and Bond plummets onto the “not yet opened at time of shooting" Millennium Dome, literally falling into the opening credits sequence, the post credits sequence is more debriefing. However, the pattern of the previous two Bond films, which also had incredibly strong pre-credits sequences, were immediately followed post-credits by another explosive action sequence... the car race in the case of GoldenEye and the sinking of the Devonshire in the case of Tomorrow Never Dies. However, my theory is this...

I reckon the original opening sequence was supposed to conclude with the office window jump and then go into those titles. However, I suspect when the producers saw a rough cut of the movie they were left similarly underwhelmed by this and decided to move up the speed boat chase... to become what is, arguably, the best pre-credits sequence in Bond history, actually. I don’t know for sure if that’s what happened, obviously, but that’s what I’d put my money on.

Okay, so this Bond features a new element to the narrative with the introduction of a “twist” villain... or in this case, villainess. It’s not until about three quarters of the way in that Electra King, played brilliantly by former D’Artagnan’s Daughter Sophie Marceau is, in fact, behind all the shenanigans that 007 is trying to put a stop to (including the elimination of her father) and that Renard, her former kidnapper, is in fact working for her. I believe this is the first time that this tactic has been used in a Bond film and it hits home very well as the revelation comes with the brutal gunning down of various key members of MI6 and the kidnapping of M.

The other Bond girl in the movie is played by Denise Richards and, honestly, I think she does an okay job and is not nearly as bad in the role as people seem to like to say she is. I quite liked the clone Lara Croft costume she sports throughout the majority of the movie and she does come across as someone who knows what she’s doing and can help Bond get out of a tricky situation with her science-tech knowledge. So I think her role and her performance on this film has been much maligned in the past.

The other truly great thing about this movie, of course, is David Arnold’s wonderful score. As well as bringing back a little cameo of the Barry Bond Is Back theme, which he reintroduced in Tomorrow Never Dies (read my review highlighting this here), he also has some of the more romantic John Barry style compositions which wouldn’t have seemed out of place in any of the 1960s big screen Bond adventures (although the main one I’m thinking of seems sadly missing from the soundtrack release). Of course, he also weaves in his trademark techno shenanigans, which he does so well, and all I can say is that he manages to match the kinetic cocktail of speed and power in that opening speed boat chase with one of the best action cues the series has ever had. It even works in, as does much of his score, the melody from the title song, which was performed by Garbage but written by Arnold and regular Barry collaborator Don Black. Arnold lost the title song battle on his first Bond feature but won it on this one and the film is much stronger for it. Also, the song is pretty good stuff and, I might add, due to it’s lyrics and dark but theatrical tone, an excellent background song to use during D/s play, as it happens (not that I would ever admit to indulging in that kind of activity I’m sure - wink).

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about The World Is Not Enough, it seems. At time of writing this, it’s the last great Bond movie, as far as I’m concerned. Well worth a watch and a much better way to remember the Brosnan era by than his fourth and final film, which I will be having to sit through again to review for you soon...

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

Top Sensation

Das Goat

Top Sensation
aka The Seducers
aka Sklaven Ihrer Triebe
1969 Italy
Directed by Ottavio Alessi
Camera Obscura DVD Region 2

When I went to the Westminster Film Fair to pick up a copy of The Devil’s Wedding Night just recently, I shelled out the extra (for me, a bargain hunter to put it in the politest terms) cash for a limited edition DVD of Top Sensation by a German company who specialise in restorations of what they phrase Italian Genre Cinema... translation: Italian Exploitation Movies. They’ve done some pretty good giallo restorations in the past and I have a few of their movies sitting on my shelves.

I’d never actually heard of this movie before but the guy on the stall was talking to me and one of the other customers and they both recommended this film to me which was, apparently, a hot item of which he’d already sold most of his allocated limited edition stock of the title. I wasn’t sure until I picked it up but then I saw that it had my favourite “giallo babe” Edwige Fenech in it, in a definite state of undress, on the back cover. Not being one to shirk my responsibilites to my favourite female artists, especially if they are not wearing any clothing, I decided to make the transaction and, as I was forking over the hard earned cash, the stall holder furnished me with the wisdom that, I wouldn’t regret this purchase... especially the bit with the goat.

I thought no more of this, thinking perhaps that I had misheard the gentleman and wandered over to my favourite Westminster stall, with the two guys who specialise in Italian soundtracks. I mentioned that I’d just bought a film which I’d never heard of before with Edwige Fenech in it and when I told them the title they both commended me on having made an excellent purchase. Apparently I had a fine, upstanding genre movie in my hands. However, the two stallholders in question then looked at each other and added... “especially the goat scene”. I was kinda worried now but no amount of, well, whatever it is I could imagine with a goat taking place, could keep me from watching another movie with Edwige Fenech in her prime.

And so we come to Top Sensation. 

It may be a genre movie, for sure... but if it is, I’m not entirely sure what genre to put it in. It’s certainly an interesting movie but what’s really interesting about it is what was added into it for various different cuts of international releases. Fortunately, I’m able to see just what the extent of those are because this lovingly restored, albeit full frame (I’m assuming it’s open matte from a respectable company like this?) transfer by a company who I would have to call the German Criterion Collection of Italian trash cinema, is a two disc edition and includes all the alternate and freshly created (for the German  market, I’ll get to that later) footage on the disc.

But the basic cinematic release of the film is what I’ll tell you about first (the Italian TV cut is slightly different but, again, I’ll get to that in a minute). It’s all about seven people and, unlike the German version, only seven people. There are two principle locations... an Island (which is in a couple of scenes) and a boat. The plot invovles the super rich mother of a mentally retarded young man, Tony, and her employees who are hired to help Tony start to develop his mind. The plan is that Ulla, the Edwige Fenech character, will have sex with Tony so he’ll grow up fast. Instead, most of the time the one remaining bloke and three women seem to all be having sex together. Then they run aground on an island for a bit and Tony finds a goat sheperdess that he likes and she and her vengeful husband find themselves on the yacht as they sail off into trouble. There is some death and there are some very slight softcore sex scenes and lots of arguing and shouting... and that’s about it. It is, however, nice to look at and with people like Fenech and Rosalba Neri in the movie, I can’t say I regret buying this one at all. Even if it does have a scene on the island where, indeed, Ms. Fenech accidentally finds herself the (implied by the edit) object of affections of a goat. So those folks at the Film Fair weren’t kidding. About the goat. Kidding... about the goat. Um... yeah.

Anyway... the film ends with the machinations of the three people who are trying to win their fortune from Tony’s mother, foiled by a deed which, by the end of the film, only the audience knows about. The ship sails on into an uncertain future. At least in the Italian cinematic version.

In the TV version some extra resonance is added by use of flashbacks throughout the last couple of shots for the people who want the added depth or justification of why Tony has done what he has done (and I’m not telling you exactly what he has done because there’s not much I can give you in the way of spoilers for a movie like this but this would definitely constitute one). The resonance of the simplicity of the ending on the first version is a little spoiled and overworked for the Italian TV version, though.

The US version is surprisingly raunchier, with added footage to extend the relativley minor scenes of lesbianism, a lesbian threesome and, yes indeed, of the curious and inquisitive nature of the goat. I say surprising because the way the censors usually work in America is that they usually let all the violence through but cut out anything to do with sexuality... not that that makes a lick of sense mind you but that’s what they tend to do. Presumably the American’s would prefer their youngsters to see scenes of blood and carnage to emulate rather than teach them how to love and respect a woman. I really don’t understand this kind of censorship but, refreshingly, the trend is reversed here, from what I can see of the extended scenes from the American cut.

And then we come to the extra footage shot a year later for the German version...

Wow! Loads of new characters and nudity and death aplently as two 1970s police detectives, who are so sexist they make Regan from The Sweeney and Gene Hunt from Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes look like poster boys for feminism, link a series of murders to the people in the yacht. How on earth, I thought as I watched these scenes, are they going to have these two bring the alleged killers to justice since they obviously haven’t got any actors from the original shoot to help them out in that respect. Easy and quite hilariously unconvincingly, as it turns out. As the two investigate the island, they see the boat (off screen) and we then cut to a shot retracked in from earlier in the film where Tony drops a stick of dynamite. Rather than the dynamite being picked up and thrown in the sea like earlier, the detectives then hear an explosion as the ship is presumably destroyed, The two detectives look at each other and say “Let’s go home.”

Blimey. It didn’t take much for a German copper to solve a case in those days, did it?

Anyway, the discs have a few extra features, no expense spared by the always excellent Camera Obscura, and even an audio commentary on the disc... none of which I’ve watched yet. I prefer to review films like this without knowing anyone else’s responses. Would I recommend this movie to other people. Well, it’s kinda interesting and has the same kind of leisurely atmosphere as, say, Mario Bava’s Five Dolls For An August Moon (which also had Edwige Fenech in it, sans goat) but it’s certainly not the great movie that Bava’s masterpiece was. All in all I’d say that only fans of the naked bodies of Edwige Fenech and Rosalba Neri really need apply themselves to seeking out this movie. If, on the other hand, you are already a fan of the film, then this German edition from Camera Obscura is definitely the one to get as I doubt you’ll find a better version around at the time of writing this review. And if you do, say hi to the goat for me.

The Mansion Of The Seven Mummies (La Mansion De Las 7 Momias)

More Superzan You...

The Mansion Of The Seven Mummies 
aka La Mansion De Las 7 Momias
1977 Mexico
Directed by Rafael Lanuza
Olympia Classics DVD Region 0

Blue Demon was a popular masked Mexican wrestler who, although he made nowhere near as many films as his contemporary Santo, still managed a respectable 29 movies playing pretty much himself... and he even partnered up in some with Santo (I’ve seen a few of these but I think I was watching these before I started writing this blog so I suspect I haven’t reviewed them here).

It’s easy to laugh at movies like this, and I often do... it’s over half the fun of tracking them down. However, I have to say that out of all the Mexican masked wrestler movies I’ve seen (and the Turkish knock offs, for that matter), that this one is exceptionally well made, relative to the others, and maintains a certain tone throughout which is genuinely haunting and watchable.

Okay, so we do also have all the atrocious acting and wafer thin plotting you come to expect and love with these kinds of movies, but you do get a real sense that everyone is trying their best and there’s even a twist near the end that I didn’t see coming. Also, although it is typically Scooby Doo in its approach to the material, the idea is better than the usual “find the villains, run up and punch them, repeat” content of the majority of the films I’ve seen in this genre. Having said that, of course, there is lots of punching and fighting in store but one of the things that strengthens this movie, compared to other luchador films, is the lack of spontaneously erupting, ringed wrestling matches interrupting the narrative flow. There’s one near the start which is alluded to but not shown and it seemed strange to me that the whole movie wasn’t filled with these scenes like normal for these affairs.

The story line is a little stranger than I was expecting too, but most of the movies I’ve personally watched in this genre range from the late fifties to late sixties, so it might be endemic to these kinds of entertainments of that particular late seventies time frame, perhaps. What I’m talking about here, though, is the fact that you have a good guy and his girlfriend and, when his girlfriend has to face “three supernatural challenges” to inherit her recently deceased fathers horde of treasure, he calls in his two wrestling hero friends, Blue Demon (played by Blue Demon) and Superzan (played by... um... Superzan), to help her. However, after being grabbed by evil forces, he then becomes one of the villains intent on stopping them and, surprisingly, doesn’t return to the side of the heroes once all the fighting is done. Just goes quietly mad and wanders the streets grabbing his box of charcoal (don’t even ask).

So anyway, the girl who’s name I forget (and the IMDB is absolutely no help with films like this, it seems... shame on them) has to complete three tasks around and about The Mansion Of The Seven Mummies which involve grabbing a sceptre, burying a skull and finally freeing a sparrow. Of course, all her efforts are impeded by the devil, some reanimated ancestors and a bunch of mummies. Luckily, Blue Demon, Superzan and their new companion, a comic-relief postman with all the funny expressions and reactions in the world, are there to fight the mummies.

There’s also a voyeuristic hunchback who stalks the lady in question throughout the movie and gives advice when the skull she is trying to bury starts moving around and trying to bite her in, it has to be said, typically ridiculous, unintentionally funny shenanigans. The hunchback character is kind of interesting because he brings to the ending a genuine twist which I’d not seen coming. Now it’s not exactly a clever twist, and if it had been in any other venue than a late 70s Mexican wrestling movie, I would have seen it coming. I think because I wasn’t expecting this to have any kind of script logic or follow through ensured I was not on the lookout for that kind of thing and, while it’s not as blistering a revelation as it could have been, it’s certainly took me unawares and I think people who enjoy these kinds of movies will probably get a kick out of it.

One of the things which make this so much better than some of the entries I’ve see in this genre is the make up effects on the mummies. They’re quite atmospheric and are similar, in some ways, to the work being done on Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters (reviewed here) in terms of quality. There’s no goriness to them, don’t get me wrong, but they do look appropriately dusty and decayed and, although not really a danger to anyone at any point in the narrative (in credibility terms, that is), I was still quite impressed with these and the sinister atmosphere they help create. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say regarding Mansion Of The Seven Mummies. A very slightly less thin plot than others in this genre, lots of punching/romping around with mummies as our masked heroes take on evil and even a slight twist near the end. Not as completely ludicrous as some of the luchador movies I’ve seen but certainly worth a watch and, honestly, not without a little of its own share of side splitting hilarity in the right places for all the wrong reasons. If you’re a fan of these kinds of movies, this one should be hovering near the top of your ‘to watch’ list.

Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor

Miss Zygon

Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor
UK Airdate: 23rd November 2013
BBC 2

Warning: Spoilers sweetie!

This year, two very famous fictional doctors are celebrating big anniversaries. The first of these was in March when Doctor Clark Savage Jr, aka Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze, celebrated his 80th. To celebrate this, a new Doc Savage novel was written by Will Murray (the current incarnation of the Kenneth Robeson pen name, although this one went out under his own name) in which Doc Savage crossed paths with another fictional character who shares his 80th anniversary year with Doc in 2013. This particular Doc Savage adventure is called Skull Island and the other 80th birthday boy is, of course, King Kong. 

But the other fictional doctor, who is quite young in comparison, a mere 50 years old as the time lord flies, is of course The Doctor from the BBC TV show Doctor Who. And last night I watched the 50th anniversary episode of the series, not in 3D at the cinema (although the temptation was certainly there), but in 2D at my parents home, as a family unit... as I had mostly, off and on, watched Doctor Who for the last 43 of my 45 years of existence.

So did it live up to the hype and incredible amount of fan expectation that preceded it?

No, not really. It couldn’t possibly, could it? But, although I found myself a little underwhelmed at the time, mainly due to my own “what if...” kind of expectations, the episode certainly wasn’t terrible and it was, actually, really jolly good, mostly. Up to a point.

It wasn’t greatness but then again, the other two anniversary specials, The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, weren’t the best stories of their respective contemporary Doctors either and, well, the less said about The Two Doctors (reviewed here) the better, I think (not even “the great Troughton” could save that one).

So it’s probably a little unfair on Moffat to expect multiple Ogron orgasms from the episode so... if anyone did really hate this one... seriously boys and girls... cut him some slack.

Now then, one of the reasons my expectations were raised so high is because, two nights prior to this, I’d just seen Mark Gatiss’ own tribute to the show, the excellent An Adventure In Space And Time (reviewed here) and, frankly, after seeing that, I was prepared to accept miracles from the regular incarnation of the show. At the end of that review I wrote “If the 50th anniversary episode shown on Saturday 23rd November 2013 is even half as good as this one, then we’re in for a good time on that one too” and I did have a good time with The Day Of The Doctor... but there are a fair few negatives with it that didn’t sit too well with me either, I’m afraid. On the other hand, there were a fair few positives too and so I’ll save those for the end of this review because, I do want to go out on a positive note on this one... I hate being a grump when it comes to this show but this is kinda what the show has turned me into over the last few years, it has to be said. It’s a much more “hit and miss” affair than it used to be before David Tennant left the show. And that’s not a pop at Matt Smith, who is briliant in the role also, whether he’s got a good or bad script.

Okay, my first negative is that, apart from not having a sorely missed Christopher Eccleston in it properly, I did think the Zygons were a little underwhelming. Now I don’t remember the Zygons too well. I think at the time of their first appearance opposite Tom Baker in Terror Of The Zygons, I was busy watching a new pretender to the Saturday night science fiction throne which, quite deliberately, aired on ITV at the same time. The show was called Space 1999 and it didn’t take me all that long, it has to be said, for me to lose interest in that and return to Doctor Who but, these were the days before commercially available (let alone affordable) video recorders, remember. So I never got to actually see the original Zygons in their first round with The Doctor but, I did like the make-up/costumes and, thankfully, the BBC haven’t really changed them all that much this time around.

However, the clue was in the title to the original story... Terror Of The Zygons. 

As in terror.

Actual terror.

As in monsters you were supposed to be terrified of... and by all reports of people I know who did tune in for it... they were kinda scary. Which brings me to my main problem with The Day Of The Doctor. The Zygons here were not terrifying and, even when they appeared to have the upper hand (in the most obvious manner where every kind of escape is entirely possible), they really weren’t all that threatening and were mostly played for laughs, really just the straight men... er... straight creatures for Matt Smith and David Tennant to bounce off, for the most part. In fact, the actual Zygon story didn’t even come to a proper conclusion that we were shown. They were just tools used to get a few incarnations of The Doctor together so those three could reminisce about an important moment in their collective past which they were about to undo and so the aliens in question were just kinda jettisoned when they were no longer needed. I really think that monsters such as these could maybe have had a stronger entrance into the modern era version of Doctor Who before Moffat played around with them in this fashion. Even the comic relief Sontarons had a few truly deadly missions in new versions of the show before they became the, admittedly quite entertaining, joke that they are now. Never mind, though. Let’s let Zygons be Zygons and forgive, shall we?

Then there was the fact that bits of it really made no sense. Queen Elizabeth the First would not be able to remain disguised, or is that undisguised, as a Zygon long enough to learn the intricate details of their plan down to the Nth degree to explain it to The Doctor(s) really, would she?

And then there was the Time War.

Great gravitas from John Hurt and I’ll get back to him in a little while but, ultimately, as much as I regretted Russel T. Davies’ decision to make The Doctor the last of the time-lords (with occasional convenient exceptions) and as much as I knew that the only way to keep running forward with this show was to bring them back at some point, I really think this episode unmade that decision very quickly and with no sense of it being a hard thing to accomplish. Bit rubbish. Nice effects, to be sure, but the time war seemed to me to be a bit of an inconsequential battle, and not the war of different aliens and collisions of history the event had been made out to be in numerous episodes. So that was kinda trashy.

The only other negatives I got were that sometimes Smith and Tennant seemed to cancel each other out, almost, in the funny man stakes (which are stakes The Doctor shouldn’t necessarily be playing about with anyway) and also the fact that Billie Piper’s return to the show was not as Rose Tyler, but as an interface based on her and who was unable to interact with any of the incarnations who would actually have known who she was. That felt a bit like a kind of missed opportunity, to be honest, but at least there was a plus side to both these last two negatives... so let’s start getting happy and brightening things up a little.

When they weren’t cancelling each other out, Tennant and Smith did have some wonderful exchanges between them such as the “reversing each other’s polarity” scene and which culminated early for me with the wonderful line that Tennant says to John Hurt’s “true ninth Doctor” character... “I dunno where he picks this stuff up from”, in response to Hurt’s enquiry about the legitimacy of Tennant’s (and Moffat’s) original “timey wimey” phrase which Smith uses. That, for me, was the highlight of the episode, in fact.

And let’s look at that performance by Billie Piper. She may not have been Rose but she was truly stunning as the conscience of the most powerful weapon in the Time Lord arsenal, “The Moment”. And put her in a room with one of the greatest English speaking actors going, aka John Hurt, give them both a script with a particular thorny issue (genocide and the mass murder of billions of children) and you get a truly great set of scenes which, alas, lead up to a conclusion which, as I said earlier, wasn’t won with too much struggle but... you know... what a lead up to it, though. John Hurt was, of course, excellent and I really didn’t expect anything less from the old war horse... now transformed into the “War Doctor” as a means of keeping out fans comments about the hasty renumbering that has to be done now.

Oh, and that reminds me. I’m not finished with the negatives after all. Here’s another couple for you...

It’s unfortunated that, during the end of the Fourth Doctor’s era, it was established that a Time Lord can only regenerate 12 times (flying in the face of continuity with prior bits of the show’s history actually, but people seem to forget that bit). However, with that bit of established lore, having a line in it from the all powerful “The Moment” which says that The Doctor’s punishment is to carry on living is really a sorry excuse for losing that rule. Really? That’s it? I do hope not but, since future Doctor Peter Capaldi (who made his debut in this episode actually, just like I tweeted I thought he would some weeks ago... otherwise why announce him so early? Gotta get him into the audience consciousness so the cameo has weight.) is actually now Doctor number thirteen, I really hope that Steven Moffat does the right thing and addresses this long standing issue properly at some point.

And then there’s Tom Baker, Who turns up playing “The Curator” but makes jibes about being The Doctor, completely breaking the barrier between verisimilitude and fiction and being completely “meta”, as the kids say... destroying all credibility of the show, once again. He was brilliant and entertaining and, maybe even seeking redemption for not returning for the 20th Anniversary special but, for me anyway, the cost was too high. Further explanation was needed but, alas, none was forthcoming.

Okay, so back to the good stuff.

Lots of Doctor Who references, both visual and audio related. I loved the new character Osgood, played by Ingrid Oliver, and would love to see more of her in the series please... and even didn’t mind the fact that she was wearing Tom Baker’s scarf. The UNIT archives, or whatever they were, had lots of references of course but, for me, the best reference came from David Tennant when he delivered the line “I see you’ve redecorated. I don’t like it.” This was, of course, a quote from Patrick Troughton’s Doctor in the 10th anniversary special The Three Doctors and it was particularly gratifying to hear my second favourite Doctor, Tennant, quoting my all time favourite Doctor, Troughton. So that was a nice bonus.

And that’s about pretty much all I’ve got to say, if I’m honest. I understand why we just saw Peter Capaldi’s face in extreme close up... they want to reveal the true personality and costume of that character in the next series and, truth be told, I reckon they probably didn’t even know what that was going to be yet when they filmed it. And all the archival footage of the various incarnations of the character on the view screen and even the overly cheesy construction of them all standing together at the end was all very entertaining. But I did feel underwhelmed and I think I’ll probably get more out of it when I give it a second watch sometime next year on Blu Ray or DVD (yeah, I know it’s out in a week or two but I’m pretty sure I won’t get around to watching it again for a good few months yet).

However, although I didn’t like the story arc on this one, I did think a lot of the dialogue... not all but a lot... was particularly good and it’s certainly not the let down, nor indeed the triumph, that I could have foreseen. Just a nice little celebration for a nice science fiction hero who deserves to have a nice slice of cake and a cup of tea on his Birthday so... Happy Birthday and Happy Times And Places to you Doctor. And may you have many more.

An Adventure In Space And Time

Cinema Verity

An Adventure In Space And Time
UK Airdate: 21st November 2013
BBC 2

Last night I saw one of the best put together pieces of contemporary television I’d seen in a long time. Written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Terry McDonough, An Adventure In Space And Time is a dramatic retelling of the story behind the first three years of Doctor Who and has been made as part of the fifty year anniversary of the show. It’s not, to be fair, all that detailed a look at the process and events that went down, for sure, but it doesn’t have to be and, anyway, it isn’t the intent. It’s a docu-drama with the emphasis on drama and, therefore, a certain amount of dramatic license has been allowed and utilised throughout the running time. This, however, is one of it’s strengths and allows the writer to weave a spell and create an atmosphere something closer to the heart of the matter... a place where mere facts can’t always explore so... well... so truthfully.

There’s one iffy moment near the end that, right since I’d heard they were making this show, I was wondering whether they’d be bold enough to try and was almost hoping that they would. Well they did but I don’t think the moment I have in mind really quite worked as well as it could but... oh, I’ll get to that later. You might want to shy away from the last few paragraphs here if you haven’t yet seen this and want to have a surprise moment still be a surprise.

Now, as I said, it’s not trying to cover everything but what this show does, and does very well, is take some of the triumphant moments from the first three years of Doctor Who and use them as story highlights to reveal the physical events and the beating hearts that birthed the series. It doesn’t harm things, either, when the casting is so good. David Bradley, Hogwarts caretaker from the Harry Potter films, amongst other roles, plays the actor William Hartnell absolutely pitch perfect and the cast he is with all deliver and, miraculously, many of the actors utilised here look very much like the people they’re playing. This helps but, honestly, they are all so fine in their roles that you almost wouldn’t mind if they looked nothing like the people in question (although it obviously assists very well in maintaining the illusion) as they all tackled the roles, or at least the popular perception of who those people were, with absolute charm and vitality. Jessica Raine channelling the strength of character of the show’s “first female producer at the BBC” Verity Lambert, for example, is absolutely compelling and creates a very strong positive role model for aspiring young people everywhere.

The way the story is introduced with a few scenes from the end of the time period under scrutiny is absolutely brilliant too. Starting off with a scene with Hartnell (sorry... Bradley) in a car, gazing at a police box after he’s just been, pretty much, fired from the role of The Doctor, due to various reasons, the narrative jumps forward a little in time to the shooting of his last story, The Tenth Planet, which introduced the Cybermen to the world, is all pretty good... and then the show jumps back via the TARDIS control panel readout to 1963, which is revisited and used as a device to click off each year as it occurs in the drama. I always kinda half like, half disagree with Mark Gatiss’’ writing (which isn’t a bad emotional response to be left with by someone actually... just means he’s a legitimate artist) but I have to say he’s been slowly growing on me over the last few years and, out of the few bits I’ve seen by him, this stands out as his best work to date... at least in my book.

The show also magically captures the spirit of the sixties, or more accurately, captures that distanced, nostalgic feel that passes as a kind of postmodern shorthand these days for the sixties, and this is injected lovingly into every frame and used to bring out the story in the most wonderous ways. Throughout the running time there are various geeky references and in-jokes and I’m certainly not buying into everything here as gospel, but it’s enjoyable stuff. There also seems to be an undercurrent of things which are put there, not for the likes of me, and which are kinda half hidden beneath the surface of the thing... which I could just about detect but which I can’t quite put a finger on because I don’t know the people in question. I was kinda half picking up  on a repression of certain hints of alternate sexual chemistry with some of the characters, for example... never once spelt out in any fashion but certainly simmering somewhere down there in the subtext. I suspect this is done for the sake of subtlety and to touch upon certain issues for the sake of accuracy without bringing it up as any kind of judgement in itself... which is great. Kind of like extras for the people in question who happen to be watching this show.

Some of the recreations of the clips from the episodes are right on the money too and it looks like the people both in front of, and behind, the camera made every effort to make them so... much more than, say, the crew of the film Hollywoodland did when they were inaccurately reproducing episodes of the George Reeves, 1950 TV show The Adventures Of Superman, for example. And I loved the little nods to the shows past with such villains as the Cybermen, The Daleks, The Menoptra (from The Web Planet story) and Marco Polo from... um... yeah I think you get the idea. I'm just thankful they didn't show the Zarbi.

I also found myself very taken with an anachronistic piece of dialogue which was just perfect but which looks forward to the show’s future while referring back to the past of the audience... when Hartnell finds himself “let go” from the show, he uses exactly the same “I don’t want to go” bits of dialogue that David Tennant spoke just before regenerating in his last story. Which is a bit of an amazing temporal anomaly if you think about it but, you know, that’s what Doctor Who does best after all and... who cares? There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Another main “moment” that happened in this whimsical vein, and read no further if you don’t want to spoil the surprise, is something which I thought would be a cool idea for the people behind this to do when they first announced it... I just didn’t think they would be brave enough to do so. Well I was wrong, they did it. Matt Smith is in here, playing himself, playing The Doctor. Or at least the ghost of him from the future, who appears in Hartnell’s mind as he contemplates his last moments on the show. It’s a nice, but cheesy moment, which didn’t quite work for me but Gatiss and the producers were brave to give it a shot and, well, since I also thought it would be a good idea back before they started making this thing, I can’t be too critical of somebody having this idea and running with it. I’m not sure it quite fits and it certainly dates it and anchors future viewings of the show to a 2013 time frame, but it’s quite fun and certainly within the spirit of the show. So I’ll shut up whining about that now and whine about a couple of other things instead.

These things being a few missed opportunities in terms of things covered which I feel might have been good to include and which I suspect were excluded due to factors like running time. The creation of Ron Grainer’s title theme tune, for example. He is credited visually with this but Delia Derbyshire, who was instrumental to the sound of that theme, was kind of short changed here, I felt. Also, a little epilogue with Hartnell’s participation in the ten year anniversary show The Three Doctors might have been nice but it would have maybe have changed the tone the writer wanted from the ending. What I would have liked to have seen, though, since the show was extremely informative to me and showed me a few things I didn’t know (yeah, I know, been watching the show for nearly the whole 45 years of my life and still managed to be informed by this... marvellous) is what Hartnell’s reaction and thoughts at the time were to Peter Cushing playing the big screen version of The Doctor (or actually a character called Doctor Who in the movies, if memory serves me right). It would have been interesting to see how this impacted on him, considering the timing of those movies.

At the end of the day, though, this programme was damn near perfect and, as I emphasised at the start of this review, one of the finest pieces of drama put out on television in years (and easily better than the majority of the episodes from the actual show itself, over the last few years). If you are a lifelong fan of the show, or even if you’re just curious about the early days and Hartnell’s involvement in the show and the gumption of Verity Lambert to get it made, then this one off special is indeed an essential piece of viewing. If the 50th anniversary episode shown on Saturday 23rd November 2013 is even half as good as this one, then we’re in for a good time on that one too.