Out Of Blue

Blue Angel

Out Of Blue
2018 UK/USA
Directed by Carol Morley
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Spoilers by implication here.

There’s a moment relatively early on in Out Of Blue when the lead protagonist, detective Mike, played by Patricia Clarkson (exactly why she has a boy’s name and wears men’s clothing is never really addressed), answers another character by saying that she hates the word ‘closure’. Well, I have to say that this film might have been a little more interesting if it had been lacking exactly that. Instead, we seem to have an abundance of closure comprising the DNA of the movie when, honestly, I think we’d have all been better off with a little restraint shown towards the constant spelling out of something which the writer/director Carol Morley still seems to want to play like it’s something of a twist by the end. I’d blame Martin Amis who wrote the source novel, Night Train for the sloppy plot structure here but, a brief summary of the plot of the novel which I looked at (I’ve not read the actual novel myself) suggests that the movie version is a far cry from the original and has not much business being compared to it.

Now, the main reason I wanted to see this movie is because I really like the actress Patricia Clarkson (since first seeing her at the cinema in High Art back in 1998) and I don’t see too much of her in enough films. So a movie where she’s actually playing the lead rather than a supporting part was something I really wanted to have a look at. And I was not let down.... by that element of the film at least. Clarkson is absolutely electric in this... as she always is... and she really does carry this film, it has to be said. Even when she shares screen time with such phenomenal actors here such as James Caan and Toby Jones, she’s still the person you are looking at throughout the entire movie and... that’s exactly what I was expecting from her.

And there are a lot of other cool things about the movie too. The cinematography, shot design and even set dressing is all pretty amazing. The real problem lays in the plot of the film, I believe. Clarkson’s character works homicide for the New Orleans Police Department and she is called in to find out who has killed an astrophysicist (played by Mamie Gummer) and, even from the start of the film, Clarkson’s character is both empathising obsessively with the victim and, also, having these little funny turns where she is either hallucinating or fainting. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for characters or objects to disappear from a scene, literally winking out of existence like David Hemming’s character at the end of Antonioni’s Blow Up, if she’s not keeping an eye on them.And sometimes even when she is.

Meanwhile, the visual syntax of the movie is shot through with a metaphor of the old ‘multiverse’ theory and, frankly, my disappointment doubled when, at the end, this 'image grammar’ didn’t really have much of a pay off and instead was merely being used as a distraction for the audience to try and fox us from cutting to the truth too quickly. There was a movie out earlier in the year called Destroyer (I reviewed it here) which absolutely relied on the audience misinterpreting the narrative structure of that film and, because of the way the director of Destroyer deceived the audience, we really did get an ending we couldn’t see coming. Alas, the visual elusiveness of a totally coherent shot ebb and flow in Out Of Blue isn’t nearly clever enough to distract the audience for long and the damage is already done when, very early on in the movie, the amnesiac element of Clarkson’s back story is mentioned and alarm bells begin to ring. Then, when an old case of linked, unsolved serial killings from a number of decades before is thrown into the mix with regards to the latest crime, it’s really not a very large step for the audience to figure out that this old case will in some way turn out to be of significance, on a personal level, to the main protagonist.

That’s the main problem here, I think. Not only is it easy to figure out both the identity of the killer on the original case and also Clarkson’s character’s link to it that, well... you just assume there’s going to be something more. The way the clues are fed to the audience is so heavy handed, in fact, that there was a point twenty minutes before the end when I thought the film was over as they’d deliberately revealed everything already... or so I assumed. Then we have an almost entirely redundant final 20 minutes or so... nicely shot and interesting to look at but completely superfluous, where we lead up to a big reveal which... yeah, I honestly thought it had been revealed already, much earlier in the film. Quite early in the film, in terms of one of the elements of that twist.

Now that I’ve said all that, however, I would like to reiterate that the film is extremely interesting in terms of both visual design and editing, not to mention Clarkson in a truly captivating performance. So, despite the weak plot and terribly disappointing closure in the movie, it’s actually worth taking a look at if there’s nothing better playing at the cinema. There are even some nice attempts at visual metaphor where a recurring image of some rolling marbles representing planets makes you realise, at one point, that this is because the lead character is probably losing hers. It’s a nice enough movie and certainly not as terrible as some of the more recent cinematic offerings currently doing the rounds but I couldn’t recommend this one if you are after a more mysterious and ultimately thought provoking cinematic experience. There are good movies out there which use astrophysics as a metaphor at the heart of their inherent mystery but, sadly, Out Of Blue isn’t one of them.

SHAZAM!

The Original Captain Marvel

SHAZAM!
2019 USA
Directed by David F. Sandberg
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some mild spoilerage.

Hmmm... okay, I’d better cut to the chase and start off by saying that, despite all the awful things I’m going to say about certain aspects of this film up front, I think it’s a really good movie and would recommend it. And you can imagine how conflicted that makes me feel now I have to write a review of it.

Okay, long story short, Captain Marvel was a character created in 1939 by C.C. Beck for Fawcett Comics (Billy goes to Fawcett School in this movie version). DC sued for alleged similarities to Superman (whom Captain Marvel outsold for a period) a while later and the comic stopped being published. The long gap before his next publication allowed rival company Marvel Comics to buy and copyright the name Captain Marvel for one of their most powerful superheroes. Some would argue that he was just a ‘Marvel remake’ even, of the Fawcett character (of course ‘Captain’ Marvel is now a girl but... don’t let’s get too complicated here, this is supposed to be a very brief history). Think about it, though... even the original Thor was a guy who banged his stick on the ground to be ‘replaced’ by Thor with a bolt of lightning. Marvel have tried a few times to rip off this character, methinks.

Anyway, back to my potted history... DC bought the Fawcett character and started publishing him again in the 1970s. He was still allowed to be called Captain Marvel in the interiors but, because of the Marvel character, the comic was called Shazam! Which is what the 1970s live action TV series was also called, whereas the 1940s theatrical serial was called The Adventures Of Captain Marvel (and you can read my review of that here). He’s been a staple of DC Comics since then but the character has probably changed somewhat over the last two decades in ways I wouldn’t like to guess.

Okay, lets get the bad stuff out of the way first. As much as I like some guy I’d never heard of called Zachary Levi  in the role here... this is not Captain Marvel. This is a mickey-take ridiculing Captain Marvel and I’m sad that DC chose to go down this path. The name SHAZAM, the name of the wizard who granted Cap his powers in all the iterations, which is almost straight out of the comics, is an acronym standing for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury and the appearance of Captain Marvel when Billy Batson speaks the wizard’s name is supposed to conjure up a Captain Marvel who embodies all the qualities of these Gods and Kings. Seriously though... it’s quite obvious that this screenplay does not include ‘the wisdom of Solomon’ into the mix with Zachary Levi here. Instead, we have the same consciousness occupying Captain Marvel’s body... which was definitely not what the original comics were about. So basically, the comedy in this version of the character... and it was always a light, somewhat comical character... is all about body switching, teenage fish-out-of-water stuff which plays like a superhero version of Big (it even has a blatant reference to the Tom Hanks comedy in it) and it does really belittle the character.

Now, I have seen DC do this with the character in the 1990s but I stopped reading after a few issues of that awfulness and I’d hoped that they’d stopped treating the character like that (basically jettisoning the Captain Marvel personae completely). Perhaps they didn’t, which might explain why the movie has taken this track. It’s a travesty and insult to the character and I suspect C. C. Beck (who has a shout out in the movie) would be turning in his grave. Unfortunately, it’s also immensely entertaining and I loved a lot of the performance here. Which leaves me very conflicted now people.

Okay, so another thing is that... and we’re getting into slight spoiler territory here folks... most of the characters look somewhat like their original comic counterparts, except for maybe Billy Batson (Asher Angel), the kid who says SHAZAM! and SHAZAM himself (Djimon Hounsou) who... I’m not going there. But the casting is pretty good. Levi looks somewhat like the character whose looks were originally based on actor Fred MacMurray and Mary Batson (sorry, Mary Bromfield... I guess they’re saving that revelation for another movie) looks just like her, especially when she becomes the unnamed Mary Marvel in the final showdown (she’s played nicely by Grace Fulton here). Similarly, Freddy Freeman looks just great (and Jack Dylan Grazer does really good stuff in the role) although, when he does transform to an unnamed Captain Marvel Jr, he doesn’t look the same as he did in his real life incarnation, like he did in the comics. Although you can tell exactly who he is supposed to be from the colour of his costume.

There are some great moments for followers of the original comics including an early appearance from Mr. Mind, the evil, talking earthworm who controlled the Monster Society Of Evil. He gets freed later on in the movie and this kinda tips the audience off that he’ll be back for a bigger moment later in the story (if you stick around after the credits). Also, Billy Batson says 'Holey Moley!' a lot, which is just a huge point in favour of this movie. Mark Strong as arch nemesis Sivana is, as usual, a truly villanous villain and although he’s too tall for Sivana, he looks quite like him (barring they've given him super powers, which he didn’t have in the comics). Alas, he plays him nothing like Sivana and it’s a shame he doesn’t let out either of that character’s prime Sivana-isms... the constant repeating “Heh! Heh! Heh!” laugh or the perpetual referring to Captain Marvel as “The Big Red Cheese”.

But, despite all the differences and insults to the original characters, the film works really well as an entertaining feature with a heck of a lot of heart and warmth in it. It has some surprisingly dark moments (especially in Sivana’s ‘origins’) but it does some nice new stuff too. For example, using the Seven Deadly Sin statues from the wizard SHAZAM’s lair, which were always a constant in the comics and using them as more of a plot element is nice. Also, Cap’s old ‘double cape’ with the smaller cape at the top does kinda have an equivalent here but, although he doesn’t actually use it, they’ve found a way to make it nicely functional by having it as a hoodie which lays down on top like a second cape. So that was really great. Alas, they don’t have the original button down top from the 1930s version of the character there but, you know... modern movies, you can’t have everything.

There’s also an appearance, kind of, of one of the other DC superheroes in the movie, not to mention a fair few props and reference to the other characters in the current DC Extended Universe films. Also, the first half of the end credits takes the form of a kind of cartoon (and perhaps as a bizarre homage to the end titles of Spider-Man Homecoming, which seems to be definitely the equivalent vibe that DC are going for with this movie) and a few of the regular DC characters appear in this animation. Also, there are two post credits sequences here... the first is mentioned briefly, earlier on in this review and appears mid way through the end titles. The other is right after the credits are finished and, well, it’s a nice little joking potshot at one of the other DC superheroes.

At the end of the day, despite the terrible treatment of the title character, SHAZAM! is still a fun and very watchable DC movie with a lovely supporting score by Benjamin Wallfisch. Easily one of the best films they’ve done. Well... I say title character but... not once is Captain Marvel referred to by his actual name in the movie and that’s very interesting because, in the recent Marvel movie Captain Marvel (reviewed by me here), Brie Larson’s character is never once referred to by that name either. It’s like both companies didn’t want to open up old legal wounds... very strange. I’d definitely recommend SHAZAM! to fans of superhero movies and, despite a few very dark sequences, it’s pretty much an out and out comedy which works fairly well. Die hard admirers of the original character, such as myself, may have a bumpy ride with this one but, at the end of the day, the artistry behind the film certainly helps DC get away, to an extent, with reinventing the character for a modern film going audience. Hoping for a sequel which would hopefully feature one of my favourite characters from the comic, Mr. Tawky Tawny The Talking Tiger, at some point soon.

Grizzly

Truth Or Bear

Grizzly
USA 1976
Directed by William Girdler
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

“...another contemporary American
phenomenon that’s truly moronic.”

That’s how Woody Allen described the authorised novelizations of movies in his phenomenal film Manhattan and, I have to say, I’d pretty much agree with that. I grew up reading the 'above average' novelisations of old Doctor Who stories and, of course, when the ghost written novelisation of Star Wars came out, with its 8 pages of full colour photos in the centre, I was bitten by the bug the same as everyone else. It didn’t take me more than about six years to realise just how stupid that idea was, though. I mean, I guess they’re still technically literature but... I don’t know, I certainly give them a wide berth these days.

That being said, I used to thrive on tomes acquired ‘on the cheap’ from second hand bookshelves back in the 1970s (and 1980s for that matter) and one of those novelisations I acquired was the adaptation of Grizzly by Will Collins. I’d never seen the film as the rating would have been too high for me at that age (I would have been about 8 years old) but I do remember thinking to myself, even then, that this movie had obviously been made as a bandwagon attempt to cash in on the previous year’s Jaws (which is also a movie I’d not been old enough to see at the time... although I did have a rubber shark in my toy box).

The reason I mention this novelisation now is because, like a lot of those things either written from an early script before the film was completed (look at the Marvel comic strip adaptation of Star Wars the year it came out if you want to see all the stuff that was cut out of that movie, as an example), it never really matched the film completely and sometimes you’d find something interesting going on. Of course, only if you’d seen the movie and... well I hadn’t. The reason this one sticks in my mind fondly, however, is because it’s the first time I’d been made aware, via a blonde ‘model’ character in the book, that a woman’s pubic hair would naturally match the hair colour on the rest of her body. Of course, that makes perfect sense but... it’s not something I’d ever thought of before so... something of a quirky and somewhat sexy memory from my childhood, I guess.

Now that I finally come to watch the movie on a relatively new Blu Ray release from 88 Films, I have to say I am somewhat disappointed that this scene is nowhere to be found in the movie. Instead, we have a scene where a lady park ranger (the film is set in a state park with lots of forest and campers) takes a shower in a natural waterfall and gets gored up by the title creature. In her underwear. Because, if you take the time to strip off and go and walk under a waterfall, you’re certainly going to leave your bra and knickers on to get wet aren’t you? Well apparently so. This movie follows a 1970s aesthetic where female nudity should be kept off screen but it’s okay to see people’s limbs flying off in various directions... not to mention a horse's head in one memorable moment during the running time.

This film is... not good. Looking at it now for the first time, in a truly excellent widescreen transfer, I have to wonder why it was the top grossing independent film of the year... a status it kept for two years. I guess the answer was it was based on Jaws, to a certain extent and is hitting similar ‘moments’ that the far superior Spielberg movie delivered in a much more stylish package.

The film is full of people you recognise but don’t know, too. Sure there are character actors and there are even less famous character actors and what we have here, I think, are specimens of the latter. People like Christopher George, Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckel are on hand to track down and attempt to kill the nefarious, giant sized grizzly bear of the title. Joan McCall is the love interest but she’s not in it much and, after the sexist Christopher George tells her character she can’t come on the hunt with him and his rangers, she dutifully sits the rest of the movie out from about the half way mark. Which is really strange, I thought.

The film starts off with Andrew Prine driving his helicopter around and explaining to some officials about the park/nature reserve for the benefit of the audience. We then follow the helicopter in a montage through the opening credits and the audience is immediately hit with Robert O. Ragland’s nauseatingly syrupy main theme as we see... just way to many shots and angles of a helicopter flying, after a static shot with extra camera jitter which no transfer is going to be able to correct. The music isn’t bad all the way through the movie, with some Jaws inspired rhythms, dissonance and synthesiser work... but it does get quite terrible whenever melody comes up. We then have Christopher George briefing his men in what could be the most short and redundant briefing ever committed to a movie. I mean, why gather up all your men if you’re just going to say the equivalent of “Be careful out there.”?

And then it becomes a 'by the numbers' Jaws remake but with no sea and with some terrible writing and acting on hand a lot of the time. The various gory demises, mostly of good looking women, are clumsily done and all in the edit because, as you might expect, the bear they had on hand was going to be going nowhere near the rest of the cast and crew other than its handler. So all the shots of the actual bear in no way match up to the sequences they are edited into... for example, you might see a clumsy ‘man in suit’ close up of a fake bear arm or snout coming into shot, followed by a gruesome picture of gory aftermath and... a cut back to the immaculately coiffured bear who has absolutely no traces of blood on him at all. Crazy stuff. So the waterfall scene I talked about earlier, is literally a shot of the arm reaching from within the waterfall followed by a shot of the water turning red to emphasise how horrible it must all be if you ever find yourself being attacked by a furry arm. Indeed, the second victim of the movie even has her screams looped on a repeat on the soundtrack for a good while in a move to emphasise the sheer non-shock of what you might have just seen while also... well, who knows? Maybe it’s trying to sound like an echo... one of those echoes that never fade and just sound like a bad sound sample repeated over and over.

There’s a lot of silly things on offer in this movie, to be honest and, if I was being just a little more charitable, I might say it belongs in the ‘so bad it’s good’ camp and... I’m not sure it isn’t.

After all, this is the film where I learned that the main occupation of people who go camping is to run along in single file, frolicking at high speed while wearing their heavy back packs. I mean... what the heck is going on here? This can’t be accurate. Is this what campers do? I think not.

There is a nice moment when, upon hearing the bear expert’s report that it must be a giant grizzly that’s doing the killing (in place of Richard Dreyfuss’ shark expert in Jaws), the head of the park (who refuses to close the park, just like the mayor in Jaws) says that the expert is talking about science fiction. About the only witty piece of dialogue writing in the whole movie occurs when Richard Jaeckel replies... “Science, yeah! Fiction, no.” He is, presumably, paraphrasing Bela Lugosi in the 1934 Universal version of The Black Cat where he famously replies to the accusation of “supernatural baloney” with... “Supernatural perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.” This was a really nice touch, it has to be said.

Other than that, though, this phenomenally successful independent movie, somehow comes off as a low budget TV movie at best, in my view. Complete with gory violence, bad editing, mismatching bear shots and a lot of point of view work from what I can only describe as a perpetually growly bear cam substitute. I wouldn’t, in all honesty, recommend Grizzly to anybody but I am kinda glad I saw it and I can see how it would be a good film to slip into a drunken, all night movie session with friends... so a feeling of community spirit can be achieved by everyone having something silly to mock. So, yeah, it might be true to say it’s a grisly movie in terms of what it does to drain the stamina from its audience, as much as it is a grizzly one.

The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad

Super Kali, Fragile Mystic

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
UK/USA 1973 Directed by Gordon Hessler
Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

I would have been five years old when I first saw The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad at a cinema in London. It was 1973 and I can’t remember exactly which cinema it was for certain that I saw this at but, a quick scan through of the supplementary marketing material included in the excellent new dual Blu Ray/DVD Sinbad boxed set from Indicator allows me to say that I’m pretty sure it was at the ODEON in Marble Arch, as it was then. It was the first Sinbad film I’d ever seen at the time... possibly even my first Ray Harryhausen although, I might have possibly already seen Jason And The Argonauts on the little black and white television set we had back then in the 1970s. It was also the same year that my parents took me to see my first James Bond film at the cinema, Live And Let Die, so... yeah, that was a pretty good year for introducing me to these wonderful characters.

I still remember getting on the tube train at Marble Arch after the film, clutching a copy of Issue 8 of the Marvel Comic Worlds Unknown in my hand as I waited for the train to come and take me home after seeing a film filled with wonder. This particular comic book contained the second of Marvel’s two issue adaptation of the movie and it had a beautiful cover depicting the battle with the big statue of Kali from near the end of the film. Alas, I never got around to tracing the first part in Issue 7 but one of these days I'll find the thing so I can read the whole adaptation.

As I stood there in the tube with my parents, gazing up in wonder at the giant wall length poster for Lamb’s Navy Rum on the other side of the tunnel, I didn’t make the connection that the alluring Lamb’s Navy Rum girl (alluring to me even at the age of 5) was the same girl who I had just seen as the leading lady of The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, the very likeness of whom I was holding between the covers of the comic I was clutching so tightly in my hand.

It took me literally decades to figure that out but you can pinpoint the beginning of my admiration/adoration of that particular model turned actress, Caroline Munro, right there. Even when I saw her in other much loved movies from my childhood, it took me a while to put a name to the face or even, truth be told, match up that face to different roles, to be fair. So when I saw her in other much loved films as I was growing up, such as At The Earth’s Core and another Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, I took notice of her even though I was unfamiliar with her name or the fact that she was the sexy girl in the half undone red jump suit, balancing a checquered helmet in her hand for Lambs.

This was my first Sinbad film though and, while I’ve watched it a fair few times over the years, the new Blu Ray transfer from Indicator is a great way to see this thing.

Now this film stars John Philip Law as Sinbad and absolutely no reference is made throughout the film to the previous Sinbad adventure, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (which I reviewed here), with Kerwin Mathews in the title role... nor to any of the other characters in that film, which seems to contradict the happy ending found in that last movie. So, like that film before it and the next Harryhausen Sinbad adventure, Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger, this one pretty much functions as a stand alone film. And quite a nice one still, at that.

The film starts off with a flying homunculus, shot at by one of the crew of Sinbad’s ship which causes it to drop a metal symbol on deck. Sinbad picks it up and wears it as an amulet. He does this after first seeing a vision of the film’s evil mystic played by Tom Baker and, also, a vision of a girl belly dancing with an eyeball tattooed onto her hand. This is our first sight of Caroline in this film but her face is in shade so the character can be revealed later via the eye symbol. After the ship goes through a very effectively shot storm, which looks and feels particularly hellish and after some shenanigans where Sinbad deprives Tom Baker’s villanous Koura of his metal symbol, he finds himself in league with a masked Visier who has another part of the symbol, played by Douglas Wilmer. They set off in a race to find the third part of the symbol which, when placed in a fountain, grants the person with these pieces special powers and riches. Aided with some new crew members such as Caroline Munro as former slave girl Margiana and his own trusty crew, headed up with right hand man Rachid, played by Martin Shaw who would find fame as one of The Professionals on TV a number of years later... the quest then takes the form, as most Sinbad movies seem to, of a road movie but with ships and sandals rather than using any actual roads.

Of course, various incidents and perils are thrown at Sinbad and his crew, mostly inflicted upon them by Tom Baker’s dark mystic, who gets a little more fragile and aged each time he uses his black magic to try and defeat Sinbad. He is aided throughout some of the film by Spanish actor Aldo Sambrell, who I believe also worked again with Caroline Munro again many decades later. For some reason, though, he kinda just drops out of the film about three quarters of the way through and I often wonder if this was the result of action that wasn’t included in the final cut of the movie.

John Philip Law is... perhaps a little wooden and naive in the role of Sinbad but he does look the part more so than the other actors who have played the character and it’s interesting because his stylised form of performance seems to play in direct contrast to Martin Shaw. Shaw, somehow, has a more naturalistic way of acting through the film and, although you’d think this would be at complete odds with Law’s approach to the movie, it actually makes for an interesting on screen chemistry between the two. It shouldn’t work but... yeah, it kinda really does, actually. Also keep an eye on Tom Baker because he makes this role his own and this is apparently the part which helped secure him the role with which he’s most identified with, the fourth incarnation of The Doctor in BBCs long running series Doctor Who.

And then there’s Caroline Munro, of course. She’s really great here but doesn’t have a lot of lines and so, similar to her role in Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, if memory serves, she performs a lot of it a little like a silent movie star might. And she’s brilliant at it. If you want to watch a film where Caroline really has an unbelievable amount of screen presence, even when she’s not the main focus of a scene, then look no further than The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad. I mean, yes, she obviously looks beautiful here... as she always does... but there’s a certain way she has about her that means it’s very hard to take your eyes off her when she’s on screen. More so here than in many of her similarly outstanding roles, I think it would be true to say.

Now the film is beautifully shot with some nice compositions scattered throughout and some truly amazing, Mario Bava-like lighting in some of the cavern sequences, where bright reds, greens and purples play against one another in the shot to truly give a visual feast for the audience. And as well as being a wonderful, artistic environment for the actors to perform against, we also have a load of the typically outstanding creatures animated and dropped into the sets and brought to life with the photo trickery of Dynarama (or whatever they were labelling the stop-motion process this time around... I believe it was called SuperDynamation in the previous Sinbad movie). So we have a wonderful sequence where Sinbad’s ship’s figurehead come to life to attack the crew... don’t know how many other ships kept their figureheads just inside the ship rather than outside but, I guess they needed to make this work somehow rather than just have it come to life and immediately fall in the water. There’s also a sequence where a cyclopean centaur has a fight with a gryphon... for no conceivable reason that I could see but, it seems to be integral to the finale of the movie somehow and it certainly looks okay.

And, of course, we also have the wonderful part of the film which made the five year old me really sit up to pay attention and... it probably has a similar effect on me to this day, to be honest. The wonderful sequence where the giant, six limbed statue of Kali is conjured to life and fights Sinbad and his crew with her six swords. It must have been an absolute nightmare for Harryhausen to choreograph this on set and then somehow animate it, frame by frame later but... well, the results are more than worth it as far as I’m concerned. Decades later, when I was playing Tomb Raider 3 on my Playstation, I came across a scene which was obviously more than just a little influenced by this movie, where Lara Croft has to fight more or less the same statue in a very similarly lit setting, by pumping it full of as many bullets as she can before taking enough damage to kill her. It certainly brought those childhood memories flooding back.

And added to all this, of course, the film has a standout score by Dr. Miklos Rosza. Now Rosza had a thing for epic pictures set in ancient times and he’s a good choice here... although the score is not nearly as good as Bernard Herrmann’s contribution to The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, for sure. Now, I always find late Rosza scoring beautiful but very dated. It’s like, however modern the film was, he would always be writing something like an old fashioned, 1940s Hollywood score and that can often overpower the visual images for films he scored which were made after the 1950s or mid-1960s, I reckon. And it’s very much the case here too, it has to be said but, I would also say that the years have been very kind to this film and now that we look back at it from a fair distance in time, the score seems to work better in context with the images, it seems to me, than they once seemed to. So I don’t know how that works but, either way, it’s still a lovely score and also a very good listen away from the film itself.

So there you have it... the story is not great but The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad does have some good one liners in it, such as “My heart is full of bravery but I have very cowardly legs.” and, combined with some good performances by the actors, good lighting and some stand out Harryhausen effects work, we have a truly fun picture which really holds up well now and will certainly keep the family entertained whenever it goes on. And it has Caroline Munro giving a truly remarkable, almost silent era performance which really draws you in. Indicator’s new set is filled with some pretty cool extras including a new interview with Caroline herself and it even has the old Super 8 cut down versions of the film as an option (which is a nice inclusion from a historical perspective). If you have the opportunity to grab one then the Indicator Sinbad box set is definitely the way to go with this one... you don’t want to miss out on this if you are a fan of cinema, for sure.

The Hollywood Meme

Meme Me Up, Scotty

The Hollywood Meme -
Transnational Adaptations 
In World Cinema
by Iain Robert Smith
Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 9781474441339

This is, once again, another book that caught my eye drifting past in my Twitter timeline and I was lucky enough to be given a copy for my birthday earlier in the year. Now, it would be true to say I had a few problems with The Hollywood Meme - Transnational Adaptations In World Cinema, the first being when I finally cracked it open to read in the Jury Lounge while on Jury Service and finding that, although the cover was correct, an entirely different book had been printed and bound inside - namely Creative Involution  - Bergson, Beckett, Deleuze by S. E. Gontarski. Luckily, Amazon were more than happy to change it for me which they did, fairly promptly. So well done to their customer service team for that one.

Now the book focuses on the phenomenon of the meme as a snippet of an idea bringing together a common visual image, for example, which is then spread around such cavernous places as the internet and changed in ways which take the core meaning or notion but re-contextualises it to fit something else... if my understanding of that creative process is correct. So what Smith does here is use the notion of meme as a metaphor for the specific elements of Hollywood product and how different cultures utilise certain things from these to fit in with a specific market place and to bring more recognition and box office gain to the equation. And he does this using a few of the usual suspects by focusing on three large chapters, one each, about the Turkish, Philippines and Indian cinema at specific periods in their respective history (again, different periods) which best demonstrate what he refers to as The Hollywood Meme in evidence at the times selected to best highlight these points.

And he starts off by making a very good point about American product cannibalistically turning in on itself to reconstitute its own successful ideas and therefore reap greater profits from it. In this case, in his introduction, he starts off talking about the universal reaction that Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens was a rip off of the original, first Star Wars movie. Of course, this didn’t stop the film’s key target audience (myself included) from going to back to it for multiple repeat viewings and it’s certainly true, of course, that the very first Star Wars film itself was a potpourri of famous creative influences which owed a debt to various forms of cinema (not to mention Joseph Campbell’s writings) which A New Hope (as it was later retitled) was less than subtle with when it presented various texts combined and regurgitated back in 1977.

He is also keen to point out that the street goes two ways, as it were, in the way that various countries and cultures borrow and exchange ideas, allowing us to distill down from bits of each other’s successes within the context of our own cultural backdrop, so to speak. He makes the point that Hollywood comprises only 6% of global film production so, perhaps its reach and dominance of so much of international culture is a bit of a puzzle. Actually, in the early pages of the book I was just waiting for him to get around to pointing out Wim Wenders famous quote from his 1976 film Kings Of The Road and, sure enough, within a couple more pages he’d gotten around to that  “The Yanks have colonised our subconscious” dialogue so, yeah, it’s still a useful quotation to use as a metaphor, I guess.

He also goes onto talk about The Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works set up in France in 1886, at the behest of writers such as Victor Hugo and how this was pretty much ignored by the various people making movies at these key times of Turkish, Philippine and India.

Here’s my big problem with the book though... it’s way too academic. And when I say that I mean that the levels and denseness of the academic speak and technique in which the book is written is far more alienating and able to render vasts swards of text almost incomprehensible in the worst way. To myself, at least. I still can’t for instance, work out just what the objective of Mr. Smith’s new model for the study of transnational cinema is... even when he tries to sum everything up in the end. As I’ve said elsewhere (in a review of a book which I’ve so far been too cowardly to publish here for fear of hurting an author’s feelings), I really hate the academic approach of ‘method, text, conclusion’ as I find it a complete waste of everybody’s time but this is exactly the mode of discourse that the writer has chosen to utilise his ideas with here. The first two great chunks of text discuss exactly what he is trying to write about and prove and then, before we get to a similarly redundant conclusion chapter, the book is split up into three main chapters which actually are very interesting when you can cut to the chase, namely Popular Turkish Cinema from 1970 to 1982, Popular Philippines Cinema from 1979 to 1994 and Popular Indian Cinema from 1998 to 2010 (specifically their Bollywood strand of national cinema).

Then, at the start of each chapter he does exactly the same thing... starting off each section with a lengthy summary of what he is going to write about and then following up, at the end of each chapter, with another summary of what he’s just written about. And I suspect, with the overwhelming academic speak that some parts of this text uses, I didn’t always understand all of the points he was trying to make. Especially when the specific samples he picks... of which he chooses three to four films for each chapter to briefly write about... are all examples which are somewhat different in intent to each other and which all use slightly different modus operandi in their respective approaches to the ‘Hollywood Meme’ part of their make-up.

But, like I said, there is some ‘gold in them thar hills’ if you can penetrate the slightly alienating writing style found in many passages and he helpfully includes, near the start of each chapter, a kind of precis of each of these national industries at the period he is writing about and how they came to be at that place within a historical context. He also talks about the lack of enthusiasm or recognition of copyright laws in each respective country as an indication of the relative ease in which films like the famous yesilcam 3 Dev Adam aka Santo And Captain America VS Spider-Man are made.

So, in addition to introducing me to the background behind the ‘yesilcam’ film and the term ‘Turkification’, he explains why Turkish cinema was more Westernised and populist in its execution as opposed to the often more artistically different film produce of other countries. He also demonstrates how many of the films from Turkey and the Philippines are actually not utilising the specific characters from the source material... Batman, Robin, Superman, Captain America, Spider-man etc... but merely using the visual iconography of those famous characters to get people into the cinemas. So the only traits that the villanous Spider-man of 3 Dev Adam shares with his comic book counterpart is, for example, just the costume and the name. And often the text of the movie will point out that the characters are only borrowing these trappings due to a plot point, rather than actually being the same characters (which is kinda interesting, actually). Again, he points out that in Turkish Star Wars, while footage and music from various Hollywood products are spliced in (visually, from Star Wars) the plot and characters are different to the original Lucasfilm classic.

He goes on to look at Turkish Star Trek (this is one of the many films highlighted in this book where I’ve had a ‘DVD’ waiting in the piles to watch for years without getting around to looking at the thing) and how it’s a continuation (indeed conclusion) of a long series of films about a Turkish comedy character and how he is injected into a feature length remake of the early Star Trek episode The Man Trap (the salt vampire one... I believe it was actually the first in the series to air when the show was first transmitted, with the second pilot film following a week later) plus famous scenes from other Star Trek episodes and how this character is used to highlight, metaphorically on screen, the exchange between Turkish and US culture.

He points out, in another film I’ve still yet to get around to watching, Seytan, which is a Turkish remake of The Exorcist, how the Catholic tropes which make the film quite terrifying for audiences of a certain religious persuasion, have been replaced by Islamic ones. So, for example, the infamous, forced crucifix masturbation scene in The Exorcist is replaced with a Jinn-headed knife masturbation scene in Seytan.

His chapter on Philippines is more of the same but he points out that their cinema is a more postmodern one in terms of its borrowings from American culture, with several sources and genres spliced in so the movies can appeal to a wide range of countries in export. So, for example, Dynamite Johnson is a sequel to both The Bionic Boy and Cleopatra Wong (the Philippines answer to Cleopatra Jones). He also looks at the way their own popular characters such as the comic strip heroine Darna, who is already a little like Wonder Woman, is further enhanced to resemble the US heroine in the long series of films about her, even down to giving Darna a similar costume, tiara and bracelets that ward off the bullets of her enemies.

In the Bollywood chapter, however, Smith is quick to point out that the visual iconography of Hollywood so prevalent in the popular cinema of the Turkish and Philippine cinema of these respective time periods, is absent completely in the popular cinema of India. Instead, it is the characters and plots, scenes and shots which are transplanted wholesale... after being ‘Indianised’ with national traits like the addition of musical sequences... and this gives various Hollywood ‘classics’ the chance to flourish in a national market where penetration of Hollywood product is very low, especially in comparison with most other countries. So a Bollywood remake of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, for example, has the narrative unfolding in the correct order but also has a parallel flashback story added and it’s in that romantic back story that the traditional Bollywood musical sequences are inserted.

In his concluding chapter, where the author also tells us what it is he’s just written about, he says some interesting things about the memes taken by these countries being 'memed' themselves and altered to produce a new phoenix form the ashes of what’s gone before... especially in regards to the web. So, for example, a serialised version of 3 Dev Adam has been re-subtitled with a totally different story and dialogue, with much the same attitude that Woody Allen ended up pulling together What’s Up Tiger Lily? from the ashes of the Japanese film Key Of Keys and turning it into something funny with the addition of new dubbing.

It was in this final chapter that the writer did really go down in my estimation, it has to be said, by using the phrase ‘an history’ instead of the totally correct ‘a history’... it’s a hard ‘H’ people! Other than that though... and the somewhat tiring use of academic syntax to render what should be easily understood ideas into fairly less penetrable ones... I’d have to say that The Hollywood Meme - Transnational Adaptations In World Cinema is actually a kind of interesting book and if you’re one of those few people in this ‘bootleg DVD, internet ironic’ world who has somehow not heard about a lot of these manifestations of national cinema, then you might want to give this book a try. If nothing else, it will open your eyes to what’s around for the more jaded of cineastes to whet their appetites on. This probably won’t end up being my favourite book on the subject but, until something better comes along, it’s definitely worth a look.

The OA

Far and OA

The OA
By Zal Batmanglij & Brit Marling
2016 USA

I’ve talked about actress Brit Marling before on this blog, both in her co-creative role with Zal Batmanglij and in her work with various other people, in some amazing films such as Sound Of My Voice (reviewed here), The East (reviewed here), Another Earth (reviewed here) and I Origins (reviewed here). I’ve quickly become hooked on the kind of work she and the performers/people behind the cameras that she works with does in movies and so, when I heard that she and Zal had co-created a TV series together, I got kind of excited and desperately wanted to see it. Alas, regular readers will know I’m not fan of streaming channel specific media and the kind of exclusivity that comes with it to subscribers so it looked like I wasn’t going to get a chance to see this one. Luckily, a friend gave me a way of seeing this and I was, once again, blown away by the kind of work this actress gets involved with.

Now, this is going to be a very tricky series to write about... partially because Batmanglij and Marling are about promoting the world of ideas and cultivating it in the collective mind of their audience, rather than presenting a standard kind of narrative which quickly crosses t’s, dots i’s and generally explains all there is to be found in a way that’s specific to a creator. Rather, they take some ideas, run with them and have an uncanny knack of getting you to ask questions about what you are being presented with and then leaving things for you to ponder on and draw your own conclusions from. That’s often the most powerful kind of evocative cinematic experience a writer/director can gift you with and, I have to say, The OA is one of the few television series’ I’ve seen which manages to do just that.

The other reason it’s a tricky thing to write about is because I really don’t want to give you any spoilers here. In fact, I’m not even going to tell you what The OA actually means or stands for. You have to find that out for yourself as you go on this, quite compelling journey of a TV show. So, yeah, I’m sorry if this is a short review but I don’t want to say too much about it. What I will do, though, is give you the basic plot set up so you can make your mind up as to whether you want to see this. So, I'm flagging a very slight and small spoiler from the first episode here although, frankly, I think knowing the start of the basic premise is just going to make you want to watch this one even more. So, if you want to know nothing about the plot at all... just skip this next paragraph.

The story starts at a point in the present when a dishevelled Prairie Johnson (played by Brit Marling) is seen running through traffic on a crowded bridge and jumping into the waters below. She is fished out and she has somehow survived this. Her parents (played by Scott Wilson and Alice Krige) are informed that she is at a hospital, declaring her real name is The OA. Prairie has been missing for around eight years and her parents are anxious to see her. Here’s the kicker though. When they get to the hospital to visit her, Prairie is asking the doctors and nurses surrounding her who these two people are. It’s okay though, explains her father to those assembled, it’s just that she’s never actually seen us before. It turns out, you see, that before Prairie went missing... she was totally blind. Not any more though.

And if that’s not an intriguing start to a story then, I don’t know what is.

Don’t want to say too much more about the narrative other than it tells a lot of things in flashback and then crosscuts to what is happening to Prairie in the present, as she struggles to not tell the FBI too much about what’s happened to her in the last eight years. Instead, she tells what’s happened slowly, night by night as the series progresses, to a bunch of five misfits who are finding a place to belong with her, in some ways. They are played by Patrick Gibson, Phyllis Smith, Brendan Meyer, Brandon Perea and Ian Alexander and, true, some of these characters are a little like walking clichés but I think that’s kind of deliberate because it helps provide something familiar to the audience to help sweeten the pill of some of the truly wild turnings this show goes down as Prairie tells her story. And clichéd or not, they’re very much 3D characters, for the most part and, as you’d expect from this creative team... they’ve picked some really great actors for these parts. Oh... and Jason Isaacs has an important role to play here too but... yeah, can’t really tell you what if I want to remain relatively spoiler free here.

The series, like the films I mentioned above, is not a thrill a minute ride which will have you speeding along with it. Instead it does things at its own pace and takes its time to pull you in while slowly putting little layers of background information in place about the various characters. And as it does so, it pushes you into the slow moving but inexorable creative current that runs through the centre of the story and doesn’t let you go until you’re ejected. Also, it doesn’t, like nearly all formula television, feel bound to a consistent running time from episode to episode. Instead, like the chapters in a book (and I think it might have been Batmanglij who made this point in an interview), each episode finds its own perfect running time for the information it wants to convey. So some episodes may run for over an hour whereas, one particular episode, only lasts little over a half an hour. One episode might have the opening credits near the start... another may not start on them until almost at the end of the show. It feels weird at times but it does the job so I really couldn’t complain about this.

The story does build to a kind of natural conclusion but one which leaves many things unanswered... as you will be expecting by the time you get there... although it also has a brilliant kind of double stance on the way things play out. The last episode does kinda pull the rug out from under the audience (and some of the other characters too) while also giving you something which slips that rug right back under your feet again, depending on how your brain decodes the art in front of you. Something which I suspect will get redefined a little anyway during the second series, which I believe was released last week (don’t know if I’ll get to see it though).

Not much more to say on The OA for now, other than it has some nice musical moments and some truly spectacular special effects sequences at times. One of the best shows on TV of recent years, for sure and that’s something I’d totally expect when I see Britt Marling’s name connected to something. Certainly a hard recommend from me if you are, unlike myself, someone who watches a lot of TV rather than film. And definitely something I’d say hunt out if you’re a film fan too, while I think of it. Don’t miss out on this one.

Q The Music In Concert

A Q To A Kill

Q The Music...
James Bond Concert Spectacular
17th March 2019 - Adelphi Theatre, London

Regular readers of this blog (and I know from my stats there must be at least a few of you) may remember that I’ve gone on record as being not a big reviewer of music and rarely write up any of the many concerts I’ve been to in my life. Although I absolutely love music, it’s not a medium I feel confident to talk about with any level of expertise, or even competence for that matter but, occasionally I will go out on a limb and try to do something because a concert has either been an exceptionally good experience, such as concerts by Hans Zimmer (reviewed here) and Brian Tyler (reviewed here) or, once, an exceptionally bad experience such as the Star Trek - The Ultimate Voyage concert from 2015 (reviewed here). In fact, as far as concert reviews go, I think those three were the only ones I've put on here so I’m pleased I’ve found another concert which was both fun and exciting enough... not to mention having a certain amount of authenticity where it was needed in relation to the original recordings... to report on here.

Now I’ve seen a lot of the greats of film music composers both conducting and performing over the last four decades, many pf them more than once. Ones I can remember off the top of my head are Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Goblin, Fabio Frizzi, Clint Mansell, Brian Tyler, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, Murray Gold, James Newton Howard, Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, Zbigniew Preisner and perhaps more pertinent to this particular concert... John Barry, George Martin and David Arnold. I’ve also seen live performances to movies handled by other conductors but I don’t like those so much because I prefer to hear the music without sound effects when I see such things. And the concerts I really have a problem with is when a random conductor leads ‘cover versions’ of various composers works and does ‘an interpretation’ of a ‘concert arrangement’ of a piece which, frankly, does not sound much like the originals...

The reason I’m making this point is because, when my friend ‘Doctor Rob’ rang me up to see if I wanted to go and see this concert with him my first impulse was... thanks but, no thanks. However, in the end I turned that into a strong yes for two reasons. Reason number one was that the concert was supposed to be compered by Madeline Smith and Caroline Munro and, if you are a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know that Caroline Munro has a special place in my cinematic heart and I wanted to see her performing from a script rather than just meet her at the signings I regularly attend when she does one in London (there’s one this Saturday in Camden Town if anyone is interested). As it turns out, this first plus point didn’t go quite as planned but... I’ll get to that in a minute.

Secondly, I clicked on the video link on the concert promo page and, asides from one of the singers doing some really nice vocals of various Bond tracks (I’ll get back to Kerry in a little while too) I thought the orchestra was getting really close to an authentic ‘John Barry sound’ on the clips... rather more so than pretty much anyone else I’ve heard trying to go for that as, believe me, Mr. Barry’s orchestrations are pretty hard for a group to get right live, in my experience. So, yeah, I thought I’d give them a go and... I’m really glad I did.

So I sat in my seat at the Adelphi Theatre with my friend, flicking through my newly purchased programme (okay, it was an expensive tenner but it’s one of the more substantial programmes I’ve ever bought at a concert, to be honest and well worth the money). Bond music from the various movies was being played on some loud speakers for ambience while we waited for the show to begin. I loved that Caroline Munro had four pages to herself in the programme and... well... it was such a shame that although she was originally billed to be there, she’d been replaced (presumably last minute because there were no slips in the programmes and no announcements that we could hear) by Caroline Bliss, who played Miss Moneypenny in the Timothy Dalton era. However, both Miss Bliss and Miss Smith did an excellent job of compering, as did the mind behind the orchestra Q The Music, Mr. Warren Ringham, who wrote their scripts and plays both Trumpet and Flugelhorn in the show.

And, I have to say, it was a treat from start to finish.

The show has two singers in Matt Walker (who handles the majority of the male vocals, although not all) and the absolutely incredible vocal talent of  Kerry Schultz, who also does all of the female vocals and some of the male vocals too. Now, it’s not just songs either. The show was jam packed with Bond stuff and although roughly three quarters of the shows are dedicated to truly awesome versions of various Bond songs (not only the title songs either) there are also instrumental cues listed in the programmes as ‘Special item - To Be Announced’ and these further highlight just how well this ‘band’ are able to nail the James Bond sound. For example, we were treated to some quite meaty and lengthy suites from Goldfinger (Into Miami, Odd Job's Pressing Engagement and Dawn Raid At Fort Knox), A View To A Kill (including a beautiful solo performance by a lady who's name I can't find listed in the programme) and The Living Daylights too.

However, some of the cues scheduled for the evening had to be dropped, from what I understand but, well you certainly can’t complain that this orchestra and vocalists, who were on their feet for the best part of three hours, didn’t give us value for money. And it was an absolute pleasure to hear Miss Schultz belt out tracks like Live And Let Die, GoldenEye and Another Way to Die. I also liked the two accompanying dancers who would come out every now and again, matching Miss Schultz, costume change per costume change and who were especially fetching in their latex and boots combos... but that’s probably something I should comment less on here.

One of the nice things also, about the band, was the way that when featured instruments had a significant contribution to the proceedings, such as on cues like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Bond ‘77, the people playing would step out of the orchestra to the front so you could see them doing their thing. That was pretty good.

As an encore for the show, they did one of my favourite Bond songs, Surrender, from Tomorrow Never Dies and that was a great one to end the evening on. Mr. Ringham did intimate that a version of Backseat Driver was also scheduled for the performance but, alas, they just ran over time and couldn’t squeeze it in. Mr. Ringham also, asides from Caroline Bliss and Madelaine Smith, told some absolutely wonderful stories from both fans of the orchestra (one who found inspiration battling cancer stands out) and also a brilliant anecdote about Sir Roger Moore which I’d never heard before. It really was a good evening.

Now, there were some ommissions that would have made the concert even better for me... if I wanted too much of a good thing. Renditions of 007, Capsule In Space, Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Look Of Love, Where Has Everybody Gone (vocal version) and Die Another Day were not included in this performance. However, in all of those cases, they are in their repertoire and you can see them performing these in concert in all the usual places you can find such stuff on the internet (including their web page, which you can find a link to at the end of this article). However, in the case of doing a credible version of a less substantial song such as Die Another Day, well... I can see why they dropped that one.

There was also a double CD and a double DVD of one of their concerts for sale in the foyer... which meant I ended up unintentionally spending a lot of money that evening when I didn’t mean to. These are also available to purchase, along with a few other things, at their website.

My one bugbear of the concert was that they neglected to play what is, frankly, the greatest Bond song ever written... one which I still don’t know why other people don’t acknowledge as the best. But, there you have it, the absolute awesomeness of Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was not included. What the heck? Maybe they’ll include it in June when they are playing a night at Piz Gloria in Switzerland but, well, it was a bit of a blow that this one didn’t make it onto their list yet. Would have been better than some of those awful Daniel Craig songs that the band here somehow managed to respin into musical gold, I reckon.

That being said, Q The Music’s James Bond Spectacular was still one of the best concerts I’ve been to in years and I certainly hope to catch them when they make it back to London, for sure. If you are a fan of the world of Bond and the wonderful, musical soundscapes from the films... well this is probably the only way to experience this range of material done in as pleasingly an authentic style that you can possibly get out of a live concert situation. Heartily recommended and you can visit the group on their home page at https://qthemusicshow.com/ to read about them, hire them, watch and listen to them and just generally get involved. I can’t wait for them to head my way again sometime soon. Nobody does it better.

Us

Bunny Games

Us
2019 USA
Directed by Jordan Peele
UK cinema release print.

Let me preface this review by saying there’s a huge problem with Jordan Peele’s Us and it’s something which occurs right from the outset. If you can get through this then you will find that this film is quite an accomplished and professional looking film, in spite of the inherent problem with the initial set up.

Now, this is the second film that Peele has both written and directed, the first one being Get Out (reviewed here), which I really didn’t like... although I’d be the first to admit that the film was also pretty well put together. I think one of my problems with Get Out is that, despite its marketing, it really wasn’t in any way, shape or form a horror movie as I was pumped up to expect from it. I mean, sure, the film was basically steeped in 1950s mad doctor, pulp science fiction but, yeah, more of a cheesy thriller than a horror movie.

Us, on the other hand, is a kind of sci-fi horror movie and much of the film works very well. I have to call it though and say that, frankly, this is the second update of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers that I’ve seen at the cinema in less than a month (the other being Hole In The Ground, reviewed by me here). The film is pretty up front about this though and, what we have here is some wonderfully pulpy, pseudo-science genesis of this movie’s version of the ‘pod people’ but, whereas the doppelgangers which inhabited the original sci-fi classic and its three 'official' remakes were fairly passive and let their ‘victims’ fall asleep to replace them, the doubles in this film (and this is not a spoiler, if you’ve seen the trailer) are much more aggressive, violent versions of their original counterparts.

However, it’s very, very good. From the opening sound of the waves crashing against the Universal studios logo which sets up a subconscious indicator to be on your guard when ‘the beach’ scenes come up at various moments in the film (including the pre-credits sequence) to the wonderful performances by the central protagonists/antagonists played by Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex, Peele fashions a well crafted and hugely entertaining horror/thriller.

There are some obvious references to cinematic history in the film, with some especially nice ones during the 1986 opening sequences... although, honestly, we don’t need to be watching an old advert clearly labelled as being from 1986 and then, in the very next scene, be told on the inter-titles that this opening does, indeed, take place in 1986. One of the things I was wondering about, in terms of influences in the film and specifically the ‘look’ of the characters was regarding the red jump suits worn by the various doppelgangers in the movie. Being as I got the feeling the hidden and lurking nature of the ‘other versions’ were possibly inspired by the mutants in Beneath The Planet Of The Apes (reviewed by me here), I was wondering if the costumes were possibly inspired by Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (reviewed by me here). Don’t know if I’ll find out though.

The film is fast paced and the dual performances by the various performers, with a truly stand out turn by Nyong'o, help you to suspend disbelief on some of the more fantastic and pulpy elements of the story (especially those revealed in sequences involving a lot of bunny rabbits). Get a load of good actors together to keep a straight face during some of the more ridiculous moments in a film and you’re onto a winner and that’s exactly what Peele’s managed to do here.

Now, I said the movie has a huge problem and so I might as well get to the obvious elephant in the room here. Even if I hadn’t been primed by the trailer that the film includes doubles of characters (and I wish the trailer hadn’t revealed that, to be honest) the problem is that there’s a point very early in the film, before the credits, which ‘reveals by ommission’ of certain shots, the so called twist at the end of the movie. Honestly, you’d be hard put not to realise the very obvious thing here before Peele chooses to ‘reveal’ it when the movie’s last four survivors are driving away in their car at the end and I was pretty surprised that the director chose to even bother with that ‘sting in the tale/tail’ because it’s such a clumsily handled set up. If he’s not careful, this director will end up being the new M. Night Shyamalan, aka The Master Of The Obvious.

However, apart from the very start of the movie ruining the ending, everything else here is very nicely handled and I’m wondering just how interesting this director is going to be when hosting the new version of The Twilight Zone when it airs. Add in a truly excellent score by a composer I’ve not heard of, Michael Abels... and well done for the company in question putting out a CD in a couple of weeks time... and you have a nice horror/thriller with some possibly future iconic imagery, nice referencing and, although not exactly original, certainly visually interesting with some almost Hitchcockian suspense sequences. So if you don’t mind seeing the ending coming a mile off, ‘get out’ of your armchair and get to your local cinema for a screening of Us. It’s really not bad.

9 Years of NUTS4R2

Floating Downstream

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.
It is not dying... it is not dying.”
Tomorrow Never Knows, Revolver, Lennon and McCartney

Okay, so that’s nine years today that I’ve been posting up what are mostly film, book and TV reviews to this site.

I’d planned on saying something about streaming content from places like Netflix, Amazon Prime and the upcoming Disney channel because, frankly, it’s still a hot topic on forums like Twitter. However, I looked back at what I talked about in my eight year anniversary blog and it looks like I covered a lot of it there.

That being said, I still want to go over a few basic things about the huge amount of streaming channels because the people who are all for them, as they feel everyone can access them are, it seems to me, somehow missing the point. There’s also a huge plus to some of these content streams but, I suspect, that huge plus point may severely diminish or completely disappear over the next ten years or so.

So, point one... yeah, Steven Spielberg’s absolutely right when he says movies funded and released almost purely on a streaming platform/channel, even if they have a very brief theatrical release, should not be up for Oscar consideration. Oscars are for theatrical release content and anything else is TV movies and not, specifically, a branch of the art that the Academy Awards were invented to honour. Not that I place much stock in the Oscars myself but it’s an award for a specific kind of entertainment route and I don’t think the rest deserve the chance to encroach on that space. There are other awards they can win which aren’t The Oscars.

Point two,  if you only have a very limited theatrical release... and I’m talking about a few days of single performances or none at all... then a lot of people really don’t have access without indulging in the strange, almost emotional blackmail of shelling out a subscription charge for each channel. And if they are going to do that then the customer needs to find the time to watch more than a couple of hours per month to make it worth their while (although, same with cinema I suppose... to an extent). A great deal of these exclusive streaming releases don’t even get any kind of home entertainment release on the likes of DVD or Blu Ray (especially not over here in the UK)... so not only can some people not even access them in a justifiable manner, they also can’t own a copy to put on their shelf for viewing whenever they want. I have piles of some 500-1000 Blu Rays/DVDs sitting around from the last ten years waiting to be watched and reviewed for this blog. Do you think I'd be able to hold onto any of that lot for that amount of time on a streaming channel?

Which brings me to point three... people who are subscribing to these are subscribing to a moveable feast. Shows and movies come and go as, bizarrely, the channels remove them from their service at various points in time. So, unlike a DVD or Blu Ray, you can’t just watch what you are paying for any time you want to. These things disappear at the whim of the powers that be so you are stuck without the product you want when you require it and, if you’re using something on there because you want to analyse it for, lets say, a film studies qualification... then you may find yourself stuck without warning and with not much that could be done about it. DVD and Blu Ray purchases prevent that from happening to you.

Now, as I said, there’s a huge benefit, at the moment, to directors and writers working exclusively with companies such as Netflix and Amazon Prime and that is... more creative freedom. I think it was Duncan Jones who said his Netflix film Mute (reviewed by me here) would not have been funded or released another way and I’m assuming that’s because a major studio would not indulge his full creative input or be more relaxed about what the artist wants to do as some of these streaming services are apt to be, for the moment. So I can understand the appeal for some directors, even if their product doesn’t make it into cinemas. However... how long is it before these new streaming services get more of an idea of what their core audience want and start imposing tighter creative restrictions on the directors? I’m sure, for example, Disney are being much more precious and controlling about their new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian in terms of creative control. So I can’t see much, if any, leeway given when it comes to ‘final cut’ on shows like this. I may be wrong but... well, I can only speculate. I suspect we won’t be seeing it on DVD or Blu Ray anytime soon though, since Disney need some kind of carrot to hook their new channel customers with. We shall see how that one plays out, I guess.

Oh...well there you are. Even though I tackled the same subject as last year’s anniversary post, I’ve clarified some of my thoughts on the issue here, I think. The birth of streaming online and on TV has created problems, I think, for the industry and, as importantly, for the end users which we’re only just beginning to grasp. Whether we can turn the phenomenon of streaming content into something which is a more positive, genuinely accessible force for the continuing success of the art form is anyone’s guess at the moment. In the meantime, people can go round their friend’s house to watch something if they don’t have the stream in question or, you know, pick up a free bootleg... which seem to be appearing every now and again at the various places one might expect to see these things. This kind of amounts to the same thing as borrowing a friend’s password and, so far, I’ve not seen any of these discs actually for sale on the black market but, if the content holders continue to withhold from cinemas and home video releases, I’m sure it will become an issue at some point soon for them.

Anyway... those are my thoughts on streaming media providers at the moment and, if some of this seems vague or unclear, please bear in mind that I’m in a lot of pain right now and spaced out on nausea inducing antibiotics as I type this stuff. So cut me a little slack there.

So all it really needs now for me to finish my post off with is this... if you’ve read this far.

Thanks to you all for reading and continuing to read my blog. Each and every one of you, whether you agree with my views or not, is very much appreciated and I hope you continue to come back here when you can. It makes this whole time consuming affair of holding down a day job and then watching and writing about stuff on a regular basis a little lighter, in the end.

Happy reading and please come back soon.

NUTS4R2

The Monster Movies of Universal Studios

Universal Challenge

The Monster Movies
of Universal Studios
by James L. Neibaur
R & L ISBN: 978-1442278165

It’s a surprising but no belittling a factor that, in his introduction to The Monster Movies of Universal Studios, James L. Neibaur quickly explains that he has eschewed various of what I would personally say are still very much candidates for the title in favour of, purely, going through the various classic monster movies from that studio which have seen numerous releases over the past twenty years on DVD and Blu Ray and which are nowadays known to fans of that particular sub-genre as The Legacy Collection. Nothing wrong with this, of course and it certainly provides a service for those who are discovering these films in this fashion for the first time... what it does mean, however, is that films that I would personally also consider part of that loose canon... films such as The Mole People, It Came From Outer Space, Tarantula and The Monolith Monsters... especially in light of the fact of the inclusion within these pages of the Creature From The Black Lagoon cycle (not to mention three of the Abbot And Costello crossover movies), are not covered by this book. That’s okay though... perhaps we’ll get a companion volume at some point.

The book starts off by briefly reminding the reader of the climate that brought about the enthusiastic pursuit and production, originally by Carl Laemmle Jr, of these horror vehicles that assaulted the public in the early to mid 1930s and then once again throughout the 1940s in various spin offs and sequels. The success of each movie (sometimes saving Universal Studios from bankruptcy) and the downward plummeting budgets of these movies during the 1940s is subsequently recorded as each film is looked at in chronological order of release. What we have here is a chapter for each film in the recently released (and rereleased on Blu Ray) Legacy collections... so the Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, Mummy, Invisible Man and Creature From The Black Lagoon characters all have separate entries for each and every movie in their respective cycles lasting maybe 7 or 8 pages per piece. Also included is my personal favourite werewolf movie, Werewolf Of London, along with the somehow non-horror movie She-Wolf Of London (I’ve always puzzled why this psychological thriller is included in these sets since there’s no actual monster in the movie at all) and the three Abbot and Costello films... Meet Frankenstein, Meet The Invisible Man and Meet The Mummy.

Each chapter contains a look at how the cast and crew were selected for the upcoming project, followed by a synopsis of the film and a look at how the film fared both critically and at the box office (often two polar opposites when these things were lurking at the cinema). So, for example, in the section on the first Dracula film, he talks about how it was refined down by various writers from the Balderston reboot of Stokers stage version of the novel (as opposed to the novel, on which hardly any of Dracula’s cinematic excursions have been based on) and also talks about Lugosi’s involvement in acquiring the rights from Stoker’s widow, with his subsequent lobbying and accepting of far less money than his fellow actors to secure the role which he had already made his own on stage. Neibaur goes on to make the point about the way the narrative is focused more on the story of the title character as opposed to adding in more significant back story for some of the supporting characters like Lucy, Mina and Dr. Seward, as a more modern take on the material might pursue.

For each film the author makes comments about the stylistic sensibilities of the movie in regard to placement of camera and general cinematography and, sometimes, brings up some interesting facts or observations that I was unaware of (even though I’ve read and watched a lot of documentary material on these films over the years). For instance, in the case of the original script of Cagliostro, The King Of The Dead, which was revised and evolved until it became The Mummy, I was unaware that in that original script, Cagliostro was a 3000 year old magician who remains alive by injecting himself with nitrates. And it’s also interesting to know just a little more detail in the story behind the original make-up for Werewolf Of London, where make-up artist extraordinaire Jack Pearce and actor Henry Hull clashed on how much the make-up would hide the face of the actor... with Hull going above Pearce in the food chain to get his way via the consequences of the original make up to certain things indicated in the script. It’s also interesting to note that when the studio successfully rebooted a werewolf character via The Wolf Man and its subsequent sequels, Pearce went back to his original make-up designs for Lon Chaney Jrs make-up. By the way, in case you are in any doubt, I most certainly disagree with the author’s insistence that Werewolf Of London is somehow inferior to The Wolf Man... not a bit of it.

Another little gem I don’t think I remembered or, perhaps, didn’t know but which this book brought to light is the fact that Son Of Frankenstein was being written/finished on a day by day basis as it was being shot... so I need to go back to that movie sometime soon and see if I can find any plot points or continuity moments which betray that fact. He also talks about the scene in The Mummy’s Tomb where the couple is ‘making out’ in the car but are disturbed by the sound of the film’s main antagonist going past as being the first time this had happened in the horror genre... I’m not 100% sure on that myself because there are so many films from the silent era which are lost to us but I’m happy to take him at his word until other evidence comes to light. That being said, I suspect that one of the later Mummy movies in this cycle may be the first cinematic instance of a living dead person rising up out of the earth but... I’ll get on to that when I eventually get around to rewatching that movie for this blog.

Another interesting point the author makes is that blending comedy with horror was not a new concept by the time of the 1949 movie Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein and his musings on various of the films traces the decline of the monster series', noting which films had lower budgets than each previous, why that was the case (in some instances... like the special effects budget being slashed because more money for effects were needed for a film being shot simultaneously) and also takes note, I believe, of the declining running times as the various films emerged.

He also highlights a lot of the errors in these films such as the horrible continuity problems with the time placements and, sometimes, location settings for The Mummy movies... and its kind of refreshing to hear someone else acknowledging those. He goes on to point out that the footprints in the snow of the presumably naked Claude Rains in The Invisible Man are of shoes and not feet so... yeah, I can’t believe the studio went with that solution, to be honest.

That being said... I believe the author is not above making a few errors himself. For instance, when he talks about the Frankenstein monster as being... “... a legend that most audiences knew due to the popularity of Mary Shelley’s nineteenth-century novel.”... then surely that implies she merely popularised an already existing character, rather than fashion the whole story from clay as I believe is the case. Also, he notes that the stage version of Frankenstein gave The Monster the same name as his creator. Really? I’ve not heard that before and would have thought that, if that were the case and it such a bone of contention for people who love this character... that he is often confused with the scientist who created him... then this would be better known.

However, a few 'possible' errors do not kill a book and, although I knew a lot of the stuff covered here before, much of it gleaned from documentaries and commentary tracks, this book wins out because it is a handy guide to the ‘Universal Legacy’ monsters where all the information is gathered into one place and, also, because there is some stuff I didn’t know about in here and, yeah, that always makes a book invaluable. If you are a stranger to the movies covered in this book then I would definitely cite this tome as being a great starting place to jump on for a flavour of what these movies are all about... although it is, of course, no substitute for watching the actual films themselves. For die hard fans, though, this book is also a nice thing to have on hand to look up the quick, odd fact for when this kind of subject matter comes up in conversation, for sure. The Monster Movies of Universal Studios is a book which belongs on the shelf of any admirer of the genre and a big thank you to the coolest friend who bought me a copy of this one for my birthday. It was much appreciated.

The Haunting Of Borley Rectory

Boring Rectory

The Haunting Of Borley Rectory
UK 2019 Directed by Steven M. Smith
Greenway Entertainment DVD Region 2

A few weeks ago, my mother was 80 years old.

She was born on the same night that Borley Rectory burned down in 1939, before being demolished in 1944.

A couple of weeks ago my dad found this new DVD release, The Haunting Of Borley Rectory, in a local supermarket and because of its commemoration of my mother’s birthday, in some respects, he bought it for us all to watch.

I somehow wish he hadn’t because... well... I guess in some way the film is amazing. Not amazing as it’s anything like a great (or even halfway decent) film but just amazing that this film actually managed to get a professional, commercial release at all. I’d never heard of it and when I checked it out on IMDB I found that it was released this year. So the ‘straight to DVD’ status should have at least warned me but, you know, there are a fair few straight to home video movies which are really quite good.

Alas, this isn’t one of them.

Now when I was a kid, Borley Rectory was (and probably still is) known as 'the most haunted house in England' but, rather than shoot a story prior to 1939, this film is set in 1944, after the Rectory itself had already been half destroyed by the famous fire. Also, if I’m understanding the story here rightly, this actually isn’t set in the Rectory itself but in an undamaged house somewhere in the same grounds. But I guess The Haunting Of Some House and Surrounding Grounds In The Vicinity Of Borley Rectory wouldn’t have made for the best title. Unless I got that totally wrong. It’s kind of hard to tell.

After two extended pre-credits sequences and a kind of draining opening credits sequence, we get a story of a US World War Two soldier stationed at this house because it’s somehow a good place to listen out for Nazi radio signals. Every now and again the caretaker or a woman who brings him food enters the scenes to chat with him and the rest of the time he’s left on his own with both visions of his war experiences... which turn out to be a complete red herring in terms of having any impact on the narrative at all, as far as I could tell... and visions of a creepy nun who sometimes has glowing eyes. He then finds out about the local history and calls on real life paranormal investigator Harry Price who was famed for his populist research on the house (and who died four years later) to help him solve the mystery of the place.

And it’s a truly terrible, unremarkable and completely non-scary film with a bizarre lack of production value (at least it seemed so to these tired eyes) and some awful performances. Almost everyone is wooden in this one except for Rad Brown who plays Harry Price... and even he has his moments but he also has some screen presence, at least... and a supporting role for an actress called Kit Pascoe, who does at least seem like a naturally gifted actress with some talent but who also seems to drop out of the picture without rhyme or reason and who seems not to have any kind of significant story contribution to the narrative at all (as most characters in this don’t). She’s definitely the best thing in this movie though and I hope her career isn’t hampered by appearing in films like this.

Um... what else? Well, I was watching this with people who lived through that time so... the bed heads were modern and certainly not of that 1940s period, the crosses on the windows to stop them from shattering during bombing raids were merely crosses in the centre of the windows rather than going around the edges and completely re-enforcing the panes, as best people could in those times and really, soldiers in the army weren’t allowed beards, as far as I can remember. So, yeah, there seems to be a lot of anachronism and bad historical judgement from what we could see.

Also, most of the ‘played for scares’ part of the movie seemed to be consisting of dreams which the lead protagonist, played by Zach Clifford, would then wake up from. Okay for the first couple of times but I think I must have seen this guy wake up more times in this movie than I’ve eaten hot meals over the past few weeks. This seemed like constant use of an absolutely lazy ploy to get as much attempted scares in the movie... and I use the word ‘attempted’ deliberately.... as possible. And it really doesn’t work.

There was one attempt in one shot where I noticed the director was trying to be creative... where only a top left square of lit up screen, approximately one tenth of the overall image, is used with everything else blacked out but... it wasn’t a long shot and didn’t lead into anything else in a creative manner, it has to be said. And Darren Wonnacott’s synthesiser based score seemed bizarrely wishy washily toothless but somehow also managed to overpower the images with something that seemed a little unsuited to the visuals... although it may (or may not) work as a stand alone listen away from the production (not that I really want to find out and I’m pretty sure I won’t get the chance to do that anyway).

And there you have it. I have nothing further to say about this mess. As a family unit we collectively found The Haunting Of Borley Rectory a somewhat underwhelming attempt at a horror movie and I must admit I was struggling to stay focused, even through the 92 minute running time. It’s been a while since I had this much negative stuff to say about a film and so I apologise to anybody involved in the production for doing so here but, you know, I have to call them as I see them and I really didn’t find all that much to shout out about here. Not one I’d recommend and I’m glad I personally didn’t pay out for this one as it’s something I’ll never need to watch again.