Bipedality

Bi-Fi

Bipedality Ireland 2010

Directed by Rouzbeh Rashidi

Experimental Film Group

Bipedality is yet another of director Rouzbeh Rashidi’s “slow burn” movies. And by slow burn I mean it starts working on you right away but the power of it crawls slowly up your brainstem without you at first noticing it. Although, having said that... it has to be noted that the first couple of really strong shots in this film don’t so much crawl as, well... rather they sit you up and shake you and make you pay attention.

The film starts, you see, with two quite achingly beautiful tracking shots of an industrial landscape by a river and I just wish I’d at some point have gotten to see this on a bigger venue than just the screen of my Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, these kinds of films just don’t get cinema releases. The two shots pan up and down in their constant pursuit of travelling the length of the river and allowing viewers to take in certain details of the landscape... and these are accompanied by the sound of rain and thunder. These are pretty much the only moving camera shots in this whole piece.

In anybody else’s movie, this might be considered a typical opening play at an establishing shot... but this is Rashidi we’re talking about here. If you’ve seen any of his movies before (or even read my reviews) then you’ll know he’s just not going to be that interested in leaving it at that and, sure enough, he soon cuts to a shot of another landscape but the effect is jarring because it’s a) static and b) got a completely different soundtrack to the previous two shots... basically an audio representation of bird song and tranquility. Thus both the audio and the visual form, from moving to static, has a jarring effect on the viewer.

After a while we cut to the two main and, but for a few shots near the end, only characters in the movie. A man and a woman at, presumably, the start of a relationship (although they don’t know it yet) talking at length on a bench (and I suspect a lot of this was done without any script) about a five year old child who has gone missing since an incident involving a fire and their perceptions of a mother who has become desperate to find this child (naturally). This conversation, like all of the rest of the sequences in this film, is punctuated by intercut shots of different landscapes using different filters and treatments while the sound of the conversation continues on.

It seems to me that, from this first conversation onwards, the film then follows pretty much a pattern of a reflection of itself in terms of structure... the only thing really missing is two tracking shots to close out the picture. I’ll explain this a little more in a while but it’s interesting that the syntax I’ve used to describe the echoing scene structure is “reflection” because, it seems to me, Rouzbeh Rashidi’s film-making is all about inhabiting a “cinema of reflection”. I’ve noticed this before in his films but the words that are coming out of the characters mouths... even the way they interact with each other (with or without verbal stimuli), always confounds a conclusive comprehension of the scene because, like in real life perhaps, you are constantly aware that what is not being said by the characters is much more important than what’s actually coming out of their mouths.

Everyone always seems to be looking internally for some kind of universal truth which will help to get them through their day... or at least make them clearly understood. It’s like the characters are constantly exploring their inner dialogue trying to nail something which can’t quite be nailed. Now, you could say thay this is an expected outcome of the process of the acting if, as I believe, a lot of Rashidi’s films are improvised in terms of the craft. However, I personally believe the auteur is at work from the director in this matter because, this quality may well be exactly what Rashidi is looking for and why he so favours the form of improvisation over standard scripting techniques. I suspect he gives limitations and topics as opposed to handing out pages and pages of dialogue to his actors.

It always feels like his characters are looking for some sense of closure from the situation they’re in and Rashidi rarely shows these situations or catalysts in his work, just the “reflection” on these incidents. Frankly though, if these two particular characters are looking for some kind of relevance and closure from each other or by looking within themselves... well, they’re pretty much buggered if they’re in a Rashidi movie. Although, to be fair, in this movie there may well be a certain closure of a kind (if you don’t think about it too much)... but there’s not a whole lot of closure for the audience on this directors films, or at least that’s how it seems to me.

There’s a sense of trying out different visual techniques in this movie too. One brave shot has the two characters carrying out their conversation as a reflection of themselves in a moving body of water which is in front of them, even though there's been no visual indication in any of the previous shots that they are in front of said water.

After 25 minutes, the scene changes to an interior shot of a kitchen where the same guy and gal have obviously moved on in their relationship with each other. They are obviously living together but are having a bad time as their relationship has ground to a halt by the attitude of the woman to the object of her self reflection and inner life. It's uncomfortable to watch the couple bat around the death of their relationship, even as the discussion is both beautifully framed and again, like the earlier conversation, is punctuated by insert shots of beautiful scenery. And a lot of this scene is juxtaposed with the sounds of rain and thunder to enhance the tension beneath the words.

I wonder if Rashidi chooses the moments in a scene to cut away to an insert shot with a specific design or whether the positioning within the flow of the film is based on masking certain parts of the scenes “out” which Rashidi is less happy with. Again, there are some really great contrasts of texture and in one notable cut away, density is created with a shot of a forest which brings the simplicity of the textures and composition of the actual kitchen setting back into sharp relief on the return to the master shot.

After 15 minutes or so of this we cut to the guy having a shower... the woman watches him, although he is unaware of this. She seems underwhelmed. The two regroup on a sofa for another round of non-communication... this time, silent non-communication.

This goes into a minute or so of black before we cut back to the characters again as they have moved in a little more in time and are once again sitting on a bench and talking... athough it's not the same location as the earlier sequence. The woman seems less interested in being distant... but she's making no sense and a lot of this stuff reminds me of a past relationship I once had. Sometimes it's hard to unravel the truth of a matter if one of you is becoming slightly unhinged. It's actually a little frightening how the non-sequitur of the woman's dialogue, with her talk of knowing where the child mentioned in that first conversation disappeared to, can be used to indicate the fragility of us all... and reveal the truth that we are all, deep down, strangers to each other.

The missing child is, of course, a standard Rashidi set up to non-disclosure... although there is, surprisingly, a certain small sense of tension-release to this film at a non-verbal level... as the couple kiss passionately at the end. All this serves to increase awareness that the words of the characters are mostly irrelevant... as if Rashidi uses dialogue as mere window dressing to the more important aspects of dramatic tone and visual contrast in his work.

I said earlier that there was a certain reflecting quality to the scene structure and now I’ve got this far in the review I can reveal that it seems to go something like this...

TYPE A: Conversation in external location.

TYPE B: Conversation in internal location.

TYPE C: Shower scene (bodies of water and the sound of them seem to be a running theme for this movie).

TYPE B: Conversation in internal location.

TYPE A: Conversation in external location.

Now I don’t, for certain, know if the director planned this structure to push the “dual” element implied by a title like Bipedality (or just made this visually implicit by limiting the majority of the shots to a cast of two) but I’d like to think that there was a certain plan to structuring this movie like this. Perhaps to just pull the rug out and disorient the audience a little more by confounding the predictability of ending on a set of tracking shots (as I was expecting the film to end with while I was figuring out the scene sequence while watching).

But this is what Rashidi does. He doesn’t make films to pander to the narrative expectancy of an audience. He makes films which will challenge (to a certain degree) and certainly inspire an audience to look beyond their expected world view as it applies to watching movies. No answers are given and no answers are necessarily conceived... just a set of cinematic rocks to rub together to produce a certain friction of thought. The film Kill List, which had a mainstream cinema release earlier this year, does much the same thing but in a slightly more commercially acceptable manner.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that, as usual with a Rashidi movie, you get back what you put into it. Your place as a member of the audience is not to question why or fathom the problems and concerns of the character... it is to look at the characters and see them in both the simplicity and complexity of life and to draw your own sense of meaning (or lack thereof) from the visual and aural collisions on screen. And if you are willing to allow yourself to experience these kinds of films in these kinds of ways... then your rewards from viewing these kinds of movies will come to you and bring the kind of mental enrichment you require, without the necessity for clarification or meaning or, in this case, a sense of a mystery solved.

Lay down your tools and receive.

Anna, Quel Particolare Piacere

Feneching Touches

Anna, Quel Particolare Piacere

(aka Anna, The Pleasure, The Torment

aka Secrets Of A Call Girl)

Italy 1973

Directed by Giuliano Carnimeo

MYA Communications Region 0

Right then. I’m kinda glad I took the time to watch this movie but I found it quite a troublesome viewing. Also, expect this to be a very short review because it left me a little underwhelmed and I was a lot more dissapointed with this movie than I thought possible.

Now then... there are two very good reasons why I wanted to watch this film, even though Italian crime movies aren’t really my scene (having said that, of course, I watched a couple of really great ones earlier in the year so maybe I’ll explore this genre properly at a later date).

My first and main reason was because an Italian soundtrack expert I know, who sells me and also helps produce some of the Italian score CDs he sells, told me that this score, by Luciano Michelini (who also did the score for Island Of The Fish Men as well as the theme music for a TV show a friend watches called Curb Your Enthusiasm), was probably the best score he’d ever been involved in on CD. I bought that limited edition score from him on the strength of that recomendation and, while I wouldn’t agree that it was in any way an outstanding score when compared to a lot of the Italian movie scores I’ve listened to and cherished over the years, it’s certainly got some good stuff going for it and is in much the same vein as a typical Stelvio Cipriani score for this genre would be.... and so I did want to see the film at some point to better understand the music in the context of its placement with the original imagery.

Secondly, the movie stars Edwige Fenech as the titular(!) Anna and, frankly, she’s my favourite of the “giallo” girls I have loved seeing on screen. I even have a mug with her on it in scenes from The Case of The Bloody Iris (aka What Are Those Strange Drops Of Blood Doing On Jennifer’s Body?) which was also directed by the director of this film) to drink my tea out of. I’ll pretty much watch her in anything and so, there was no way I could really go that wrong when I finally got around to tracking down a copy of this movie and buying it.

However, it has to be said that the film does not have a lot going for it in my opinion. True, the acting is great in this story of a girl who falls for a “bad apple” who beats her up and pimps her out for his mafia connections... at least, that is to say, it’s good for the standards of this particular genre and Edwige is always a convincing actress who throws herself into her roles.

True, also, there’s some lovely shots and edits and fairly inventive camera work which is typical of the “Italian movie scene” of the time and which helps to elevate this movie visually with some expert moving camera work to draw you in and some great set design with vertical slashes of blue and red boldly placed in the centre of some of the frames which is quite astonishing and brave in some sequences.

However, the story and characters were so worrying to me that I wasn’t able to pull myself out of the picture significantly enough to concentrate on the mise-en-scene... even when Fenech was walking around nude, as she did a fair amount in her movies. The sexist and misogynistic attitude of her mafia boyfriend was such that I really had a hard time watching Fenech get shouted at, forced to do stuff against her will and constantly slapped around the face. While there are certainly interesting elements to the film, such as the way the time displaces itself between scenes by jumping six or so years at a time or the unbelievably Dr. Kildare-to-the-rescue-but-not-quite bleakness of the ending with her young child and John Richardson (from such movies as Black Sunday, She, One Million Years BC and The Vengeance Of She), the sheer brutality of the role is really not my cup of tea and, despite its noteworthy soundtrack, I don’t think I’d find myself watching it again to be honest.

So there you go. A film which was not to my taste and which I can’t in all conscience recommend to people, even though I know a fair few people have said some good things about it. Not my cup of tea I’m afraid... even when I’m drinking it from my Edwige Fenech mug!

Mission Statement/Coming Soon

Missionary Position

“Restate my assumptions”

Maximillian Cohen, Darren Aronofsky’s PI.

I think I need to make a slight adjustment to my own, and possibly other people’s, expectations about this blog review thing I’ve got going on here. But, just to make it a little more fun (hopefully), this’ll also take the form of a “coming soon” kinda thing for future entries on these pages... as much as it will an apology of sorts.

My faith in film blogging has been shaken a little recently. That is to say, my selection process as to whether I write about a movie has had to undergo a very minimal rethink... here’s what happened...

On Halloween weekend I, and a few friends, went to a special screening at my local “art complex” although, to be fair, complex is a bit overblown for the kind of building it is. Anyway, we were there for a double bill screening of Universal’s 1931 film Frankenstein and their 1935 sequel Bride Of Frankenstein. It was also meant to, not just celebrate the spirit of Halloween, but also to honour the memory of a famous local celebrity of days gone by who used to attend my school, namely... Boris Karloff.

All was well until the first film screened... they’d squashed (or stretched, depending on your point of view) the original 4:3 aspect ratio of the movies into a 1.85:1 aspect ratio to fit the size of their screen (this film was made before the traditional widescreen process as we know it today had been invented, don’t forget). This resulted in a load of fat, bloated actors looking like they were walking around the set of a crazy fun house... ushered in, not by the traditional Universal globe but by a Universal rugby ball... or so it seemed from its shape.

Now I went out to complain about the films being improperly framed but was fobbed off and told, in more or less these words, that they had decided to show them in an aspect ratio distorted to fill their screen... rather than actually show the film properly. Nothing was changed and people were forced to watch this painful mockery or leave.

Now I sent a lengthy letter of complaint to a couple of my local newspapers and was happy to see that they’d both published my angry and, it must be said, sizeable rant against the “cinema-nazis” and their “crimes against filmanity”. Hopefully the people responsible will take heed of some of the points I raised in my letter.

However, this left me with a dilemma because I wanted to review the two films for this blog... but hadn’t actually seen them (this time around) in their best light. Now I’ve seen both films a fair number of times (at least into double figures) and I could probably write a fairly accurate and honest appraisal of both these films in my sleep without even bothering to watch them again I suspect (and please, no comments about the blogs coming out more comprehensible if I stuck to writing them in my sleep :-7 ) but the point was... should I?

I thought about my original intentions with this blog and how I wanted to ensure that every film and TV show I watched would be reviewed here (along with the majority of the books I was reading and a smattering of music reviews when I felt brave enough) but I then thought, rather than write about these films right now... I would save these two for a future year (maybe next year, maybe the one after) and watch them again properly... but this time in context as an occasional running series on all the classic Universal Horror movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s in chronological order of their release... so readers new to the material could get a sense of the progression (or possibly digression and regression, depending on whether you love these movies as much as me or not) and context with the series of films. So that’s what I’m going to do...

So there you have it... my apologies for not reviewing two films I’ve seen recently... but they will go back on the list and be done properly, rather than write a review based on the hideous screening I saw at the end of last month.

Actually, series’ of reviews are something I want to get into more in the coming months/years so, here’s a little preview of some of the things I hope to achieve on the blog sooner or later...

For one thing I want to continue to watch and promote small independent films which have no or little mainstream commercial appeal... they’re definitely not in it for the money... they’re in it purely for the art (for once). So films by writer/directors like Rouzbeh Rashidi and actor/writer/directors like @eJamesDevereaux are something I’m going to continue to promote here on my blog... and hopefully Leilani Holmes will make some more of her excellent movies and I’ll be able to watch and review them here. In fact, I’m hoping to get an interview with Devereaux on my blog sometime in the very near future and also, if she’ll still consent, an interview with gothic horror photographer and jewellery designer Amanda Norman at some point either late this year or, more likely, sometime in the New Year.

I’d also, as I said, like to get into some reviews which review a large body of work over a period of time... so in addition to the aforementioned Universal Horror classics... I’d like to do something like a serialised review for the complete feature films of Akira Kurosawa, another series on Andrei Tarkovsky (including The Killers and The Steamroller & The Violin) and another on a man who I personally believe to be the greatest “living” writer/director, Mr. Hal Hartley .

And don’t worry... I’ve still got the cinematic trash and exploitation covered... gialli, b-movies, blaxploitation, westerns, sci-fi shockers... it’s all in a pile on the floor waiting to be watched. So don’t be surprised if you find... along with all the reviews of what I’m seeing currently at the cinema... and alongside of the Bergmans and the Kieslowski’s... stuff like Invasion Of The Crab Monsters, Galaxina, Blood Sabbath (on the recommendation of Hypnogoria... so blame him) and Four Flies On Grey Velvet (of which I seem to have now acquired four different prints of... not bad for a film which has only had a commercial DVD release in the last few years).

So there you have it... I’m going to keep on blogging with some interesting titles to review to suit, hopefully, lots of different tastes (I’m nothing if not eclectically post-modern)... so as long as you brilliant readers continue to pop by every now and again and check out the odd review or two (and some will no doubt be odder than others)... I’ll keep churning them out for your entertainment and, perhaps once in a while, enlightenment.

Thanks for reading... a new review coming soon!

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

Never Ending Story

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Season 5 Episodes 5 & 6:

The Man Who Never Was

Airdate: October 17th and 18th 2011.

UK. CBBC

Warning: There never wasn’t any spoilers here... in abundance.

Okay then. I suppose it’s time for me to write up the last ever story of The Sarah Jane Adventures... unless, of course, you’re reading this article from 40 years or so into the future, in which case it was the last ever story of The Sarah Jane Adventures to be broadcast starring the timeless Elisabeth Sladen in the title role, before Dakota Fanning took over only last year. :D

This is a fun packed little story. Predictable, yes.. but ever so fun and, to boot, it starts touching once more on raising awareness of social issues like the previous story... this time though it’s the exploration of slave labour which is lobbed at right thinking kiddie audiences like a hand grenade of questions targeted straight into the brain. But it’s also got other things going for it...

The Luke-like character of Sky was only introduced into the show as a new regular at the opening of this final half a series but already she’s integrated nicely into the chemical make-up of the show (I forgot to mention this in my previous Sarah Jane review but Sky was absolutely brilliant in The Curse Of Clyde Langer and in some ways saved the day... plotwise that is). There’s just one more form of acceptance they need to work into things and that is the question of how she’s going to get on with her virtual sibling Luke. Well Luke comes back from University to share in this adventure and is “teamed up” with Sky so the two can bond in quality pseudo-brother and sisterly ways so the audience will be happy that the two have accepted each other. Alas, Luke does not bring K9 with him and so, apart from a few old insert shots at the end of this story, this marks the first and last season of the show to not actually include K9. I’m sure they would have worked him back in for the “planned” final episode but... well, we all know what happened. It’s a sad ending to a great TV show and the great person that TV show revolved around.

The plot on this one is basically a comedy romp as the planet is hypnotised by a holographic projection into buying crappy new computers called SerfBoards and this holographic projection is controlled by a group of alien slaves pulling levers to get the man to talk, twitch, walk etc... if you remember that old strip in The Beezer comic called The Numbskulls, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

The man behind the whole thing is doing everything purely for money, has bought himself some alien slaves and has a push-button collar punisher system at work to keep the aliens in their place. Much is made of gaining possession of the controller for this so that the aliens can go free and while Sarah Jane and a cleaner from the studio from which transmissions of the hologram are being broadcast are locked out of the way... Luke and Sky investigate the aliens while Rani and Clyde come to the rescue. This basically is a great comedy romp which includes, towards the end, the scene you just know is going to happen of Luke and Sky having to control the hologram all by themselves and making a complete hash of it. This, of course, gives rise to much enthusiastically comic acting from the gentleman playing the hologram guy.

It was nice to see Peter Bowles still working in a supporting role too! He only as a couple of walk ons but still, nice to see the old geezah!

There’s also a nice comic moment when Sky has her mobile phone crushed under foot by the bad guy. When she starts to protest, Luke steps in to say something along the lines of “Welcome to the club! I’ve had seven phones in the last couple of years!” This kind of acknowledgement of the actual “real world” toll of cheap throwaway, formulaic scripting gimmicks such as this destruction of people’s communication devices to get rid of easy solutions out of a dramatic situation is a quite sophisticated element of self-awareness on the part of the writers and it’s just another point one can use to demonstrate how great this series had become, once it got itself going.

It’s a shame that it’s all got to end but... end it does and in the last five minutes, after the main resolution where Luke has “officially given approval” of Sky having his old room, we get a little sequence of clips from old episodes narrated by Sarah Jane (I think this voice over comes from a similarly styled sequence in a previous series) and which ends, more or less, with a shot of her hugging David Tennant’s incarnation of The Doctor from the Series Three episode The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. This is followed by a zoom out of the planet earth and the words... “And The Story Goes On... Forever.” I warn any parents who are planning on watching this with their kids now... if any of your kids know why this is the final episode of the series, then this admittedly short sequence is gonna be a real tearjerker for them. I know it almost was for me... yeah, I know... whatever! I’ve been watching Liz Sladen play Sarah Jane on TV since the early seventies so I’m entitled to be missing her a little now she’s been taken by cancer. I’ll get over it... eventually.

So that’s it then. No more Sarah Jane but I do hope that some of the young actors who have played the leads in the show go on to do other things and don’t just disappear... they’re all quite talented and, at the very least it seems to me, good “work-a-day” performers. Hope this show opens some doors for them.

The Awakening

Waking Dreams

The Awakening 2011 UK

Directed by Nick Murphy

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Silently stalking spoilers will rise up from

this article to haunt the doll’s house of your mind.

Okay, there are good and bad things sharing the load in equal number in The Awakening... not to be confused with the second of the three adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars, which shares the same title as this movie.

The real problems this film has, if you agree it has any problems at all, lie within the script but only, it seems to me, in terms of the story and not the dialogue. I got a real split reaction to this movie but, overall, I think the positives on this one far outweigh the, frankly inevitable, negative points about this piece.

So let me share with you first, by way of showing you why this movie is worth seeing, the main positive on offer here. The main, central character... and she really is the main character as she’s pretty much in almost every shot apart from a few establishing shots and a couple of minor sequences where the camera has to follow another character... is something of a great, literary pulp creation and it’ll be a shame if this movie is the only thing this character ever turns up in. The character’s name is Florence Cathcart and I don’t care if she turns up again in a film, a TV series, a series of novels or what... this character is great and I want more of her.

Florence Cathcart, who I might normally call the main protagonist but in this case I’ll make and exception and call her... our heroine, is a professional sceptic. Set in 1921, a few years after she loses her lover to World War I, Miss. Cathcart makes her living by publishing her books about her exploits as... well... as a professional sceptic I guess would be an apt term. That is to say, she goes around with various parapsychology detecting equipment and disproves the existence of the ghostly and, often, exposing fraudulent practitioners of spiritualist endeavours who are out to make a quick buck off of the less fortunate.

And this is, in fact, how our story starts... by setting up the character and showing her breaking up a spiritualist seance. In this opening sequence, we see we have a director who knows how to be efficient with his cinematic shorthand. We see the seance as it takes place, see Florence expose them and call in the police, see the culprits taken away and then, in a brilliant little moment, we see her slapped in the face in a really great little cinematic “jump” shot and this shows the way in which, even the people whom she has saved from throwing away good money after bad, resent her from taking away their illusions of an afterlife... and then this basic set up is used to depict the distressed/depressed darker part of Cathcart’s character... it’s all filmed in the most economical manner. Florence is played quite brilliantly by actress Rebecca Hall who delivers some quite intelligent and witty dialogue against some other quite splendid actors and actresses which, at the same time, also manages to add real depth to the character... a character who, we will later find out, we know nothing about really after all.

However, if the script is brilliant in terms of dialogue and the way it informs the characters, it lacks in other areas because, frankly, it’s very unlikely that anything much in this movie is going to take you by surprise and, although I am blaming the writing for this (obviously) I do feel, since I did have a good time with this movie, that it’s not entirely the fault of the people writing this film.

You see, the plot of this one involves our newly established and cynical heroine called in to help the teachers and boys in a boarding school rid themselves of the ghost who has been appearing in their school photos for years on end and who seems to have killed someone recently... and herein lies the problem with what ails the script. The trouble with these kinds of ghostly, haunted house horror films is that the audience, whether they are aware there’s going to be some kind of twist or not, are always on the lookout for any such twist to occur, often without even knowing about it... and more often than not (and such is the case on this one I’m afraid) the audience are going to guess the nature of the twist as soon as they see the first sign of a clue and these kinds of movies don’t really have a lot of options anyway when it comes to tricks up their sleeve. In this one, for example, I was already on my guard before Florence had even arrived at the school, taking part in that old horror film favourite of “trying to spot the character who isn’t actually alive”... and I have to say, it didn’t take me very long, on that characters first shot, in fact, before I’d spotted our undead friend and started trying to unravel the second big twist I knew would be coming after that.

I don’t want to spoil it too much for anyone who’s not seen it yet but I will say that the solution to the mystery at the heart of the movie is pretty obvious... but I also have to say that, even when you’ve put all the pieces together in your head, the sleight of hand in this one is such that you will probably forget about them or dismiss them as too obvious before they’re actually revealed... and that’s what horror films of this nature are all about really isn’t it? Sleight of hand?

Now there are some wonderful sequences in this film... including an absolutely brilliant set of rooms within a doll's house which mirror the haunting sequences which have just taken place... and it is such a brilliant and simple idea (however obvious). The heroine sees the scenes including the little recent episodes of “encounters” (even those from just 30 seconds before she starts looking in the doll's house)... only to eventually come to a room which has her looking in the doll's house... with a ghostly figure standing just behind her. Real nape of the neck stuff people. Very much from the Shirley Jackson/Steven Moffett school of... “never mind worrying about if it’s going to happen, it’s already happening, you just haven’t realised it yet” school of “fright delivering”. It has to be said though, The Awakening does tend to overplay its hand just a little too much as it gets closer to the actual reveal.

But the great thing about this movie is... it doesn’t matter! This film has great acting, great dialogue, sure and steady (nothing too flashy) but nicely composed camerawork and even a nice, haunting score going for it. And even though you know it’s going to be a bit obvious... the eerie atmosphere and occasional jump scares are so well done that you shouldn’t go away feeling too disappointed by the film. And did I mention it has a great character who, although she will go on a journey of self discovery as the film progresses (it’s in the title people!)... really should come back in something else please. Preferably as played by the delightful Rebecca Hall who really elevates this movie from being a competent time at the movies to a fun time at the cinema. Definitely one to watch out for if you are into your chilly, gothic hauntings. Give it a go.

Metropolis (1927 - 2010)

Helm’s Deep

Metropolis 1927 Germany

Directed by Fritz Lang

Eureka: The Masters Of Cinema Region 2

Spoilers:

Yeah, they’re here...

if you’ve never actually seen this movie.

“There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.”

Maria, Metropolis

I don’t even know where to start! This is going to be a tough one to write methinks.

I mean, how daunting is it to force oneself to review a movie that is considered by many to be the pinnacle of artistic success in motion pictures for the 20th Century? Especially when it has such a convoluted path to it’s present incarnation... a version which I never thought would ever happen in my lifetime. One of the true holy grails of modern film miracles which gobsmacked the film going populous only last year when... but I’m getting ahead of myself already here.

Another reason why this film is such a problem for me is that... my personal response to Metropolis has not always been that good either, at various times throughout its ever changing incarnations. So I really need to also come to terms with my own feelings about the movie as I write this. If it’s anything like my normal process, I might discover new things about myself as I type and my brain starts sorting things out for me.

Okay.... so where does Metropolis come from, other than from the mind of Fritz Lang and his wife? It’s been nearly three decades since I read anything about the film or about German Expressionism but this is what I remember...

Like a lot of countries in the early days of cinema, Germany was suffering from having way too many American motion pictures monopolising the cinemas and holding films produced in other countries at bay in a weird, creative stranglehold... and to be brutally honest, nothing has changed to this day, all countries including my own still suffer from having 95% or so American movies playing on our cinema screens at the exclusion of almost any other country's works. Most countries couldn’t find anything they could do about it but Germany was smarter. They formed an artistic movement called German Expressionism and my understanding of it is that they did wilfully create it (a bit like The Monkees were a group formed for a show) as opposed to it springing up naturally. The cinematic arm of German Expressionism was a direct way of competing with the opposing American product by giving their films a completely distinct visual look from all other countries. This started around about 1913 and involved very stylistic sets and also, very stylistic acting which to modern audiences (and probably some audiences back then too) may look a little silly, wrought and overstated. In fact, what is often thought of as silly silent cinema acting today, by many people, is based on the Western perception of a handful of very famous German Expressionist films such as The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari, The Golem, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (hmmm... where have I heard that name before) and the last big hurrah of German Expressionism, Metropolis in 1927... which pretty much finished the movement off is my understanding of it. Probably because it cost so much money to make, was a completely unwieldy size and flopped abysmally at the box office (both domestic and overseas).

I say it died in 1927 but it didn’t really... at least it’s my personal opinion that it didn’t. A lot of those directors and cinematographers fled the beginnings of Nazi Germany to go to Hollywoodland and it’s my belief that you’ll find a lot of German Expressionism in US movies of the 30s and 40s... it was a big influence. I can’t imagine how we’d have got the genre known as Film Noir without it’s heavy leanings towards the expressionistic lighting styles of those early silent German films and likewise with the classic horror movies too. Watch Son of Frankenstein (1939) for example... the set design is amazing. It could be perhaps more precisely titled Son of Caligari to give an appropriate feel for the movie.

But I digress... not that it’s unusual for me to do so.

Metropolis flopped for its studio UFA and after two US companies, Paramount and Metro Goldwyn Mayer, joined and merged with UFA to make a new company, the less than imaginatively titled Parufamet (Par-UFA-Met), they decided to cut the film pretty much in half... so they excised over an hour of footage to make their new cut and... yeah, that’s right, you know the story... they destroyed all the footage they had cut. Every last frame of it in that negative. Gone for good? Well.... as we now know, that’s only half the story. But the story and sense of Metropolis was completely gone and it was heavily simplified and jumped around somewhat... I reckon it’s always needed a little leap of faith to stay with what became of the narrative, based on my own experiences of it.

I first saw Metropolis as a kid. It was shown on TV in the UK in a print of some sorts, either a year or two before Star Wars came out or a year or two after. I knew nothing of its history so just assumed I was watching the film as it was made. So somewhere between 1975 and 1979 was my first viewing of it. And of course, I loved the famous and iconic robot in it... a robot which is in it for only a few minutes and moves around for... well... seconds. She was beautiful, that curvy girl of steel. I always wanted to see more of her. It could have been love at first sight. The rest of the film was okay... it was kind of intriguing. I loved the set design and the people at the clock faces in the factory... but ultimately it really didn’t do much for me and I wasn’t that bothered about seeing it again.

There seemed to be a long lean period for releases of silent films soon after that... apart from a ridiculous Giorgio Morodor version of Metropolis with some added footage... which was truncated down even more and had silly pop songs grafted on to it to impose yet another form of narrative contrast over it which, in all honesty, is the last thing it needed. But yeah, silent films were getting hard to see for a while... I remember pining away to see stuff like The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari in my student days and finally, an obscure UK VHS label from a private collector known as the Aikman Collection released a few of these titles... including Metropolis. So I snagged one as a Christmas present and was again intrigued by the movie but... again the film disappointed me as a single viewing experience. It just felt wrong and unsatisfying somehow. I saw it a few times but it never really grabbed me as much as it seemed to grab other people. I much preferred The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari as my all time German Expressionist film (and probably still do to this day as it happens).

But the historic landscape of Metropolis shifts periodically, as I said, and every now and then a bit more footage turns up from some unexpected source and we get a new version of it released... to much publicity.

However... my view of this movie changed radically when I saw the Eureka: The Masters of Cinema restoration from 2002 back in...um... would have been 2003, I think. This included more footage than I ever thought possible and the story was completely different to what I'd remembered. This print from 2002 was, for me, a revelation. This version made sense, had a much more pertinent storyline to match the visuals and was just a joy to watch. Metropolis and I were finally bestest buddies... and I knew I was seeing it finally in the best light I would ever see in my lifetime...

But, of course, the story doesn’t end their either. In 2008 a scratchy copy of the original length version (more or less) was found in a private collection in Argentina. It was badly deteriorated but, asides from a few minutes, it’s pretty much the whole thing... or is it? Well it took nearly two years to restore to something that is, in some ways, watchable and this is the version I saw last week now that Eureka: The Masters Of Cinema have re-released it again in this format. It’s a great film but something seemed different... although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Turns out that Fritz Lang had several cameras going on it all the time and printed many different takes. This version comes from at least three different sources (including the Argentinian one, obviously) and utilises some different takes and angles from the previous one in addition to the new sequences which, I have to say, look pretty scratchy. Not the most ideal but it has to be said the people doing the work are absolutely brilliant for doing as good a job as they have with it. What a find! A holy grail movie has now pretty much finished its long path from its initial release in 1927 to something not far from its original form in 2010. I am absolutely thrilled to have been able to see this one happening (now if somebody could only turn up a true print of London After Midnight I’d be pretty pleased).

And my favourite part about this magnificent story... well they found the original notes on the original score written for the performance of the film and this is what allowed them to piece all the footage back in together and get the correct running times for the takes etc. So you know the old director rushing in to the composer and asking him to “save my film” story that’s often told when the first print of a movie is seen and it sucks... well the new restoration of Metropolis is literally a case of the score coming to the rescue. This makes me smile big time!

So yeah, I watched the new version of Metropolis and was once again bowled over by the way it all works now as a whole. The acting is decidedly over-the-top expressionism from the leading man, in my humble opinion, but it was deliberate and therefore must be taken as an enhancement to the art form in the case of this kind of stylistically “rendered” movie (for a more naturalistic acting style as an introduction to the appreciation of silent film performance as an art, check out the dinosaur epic The Lost World from 1925).

I love the way this film uses shafts of light and smoke and other visual metaphors to create the illusion of sound (which in some cases, it has to be said, is rendered unnecessary when you see it against the original score, which does have a lot of Mickey Mousing going on in it) and those brilliant sets and street miniatures which have influenced loads of movies (including my favourite movie Blade Runner) are all still real eye openers. Doubly so when you realise that all those cars and planes whizzing and flying by were done as stop motion animation. Yeah, I’ll repeat that and let it sink in for a second. Stop motion animation! one of the crew commented that it took them over a week just to get ten seconds of film. I never even realised that it was stop motion until I was told. I mean... look at it! That’s amazing.

And I’ll tell you another thing that’s amazing... Brigitte Helm! What a beauty! And those scenes where she plays the evil robot incarnation of her character Maria... what a dish with all those sexy dances. She has two roles and one of them gives the movie heart while the other one sexes the movie up. She’s worth the price of admission alone.

Okay... as far as the DVD itself goes... well the restoration is excellent but obviously the state of the print is not something they could magically erase without spending millions on it (I guess). Also, the tin and the accompanying booklet (which I’ll confess I haven’t read yet but was slightly dismayed at the very thin paper stock they’ve used to print it on) are both pretty “right on” in terms of making you feel you’ve got a nice little movie package (something which will be completely lost when digital downloads come in big time and which will severely shrink the audience of such movies I suspect) but the accompanying documentary, which runs for nearly an hour, is a different matter. For, while it’s an interesting and fascinating education as to the different versions of the print used... it failed to deliver any oomph and I just wasn’t as excited or enthused by it as I’d hoped I would be. I mean, come on guys... film restoration is a fantastic subject... how do you make it all sound so boring? That minor grumble aside though, it’s still worth a watch to get some of the facts and figures of this movie delivered in a, slightly, quicker method than reading it in a book.

And as for the film itself... well if you call yourself a film lover and you’ve never seen Metropolis then you should hang your head in shame and acquire a copy. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea but you will marvel at the amazing craftsmanship involved with this film and it’s a good lesson on the visual power of film. Whether you like it or not... you need to see this movie!

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Curse Of Clyde Langer

The Ballad of Rani & Clyde

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 5

Episodes 3 & 4: The Curse Of Clyde Langer

Airdate: October 10th and 11th 2011. UK. CBBC

Warning: This review is cursed with spoilers.

Well I know this review is a few weeks late but I have to say that I’m just getting more and more impressed with each new series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It’s been far more consistently entertaining than the show it spun off from of late (Doctor Who) and it’s modestly been collecting its usual top spot ratings for children’s TV in the UK, ousting the competition by a wide margin still.

The Curse of Clyde Langer is one of the best installments I’ve seen in the show and it’s really a shame this half series is its last hurrah as I’ve noticed that the writing has just started to address social issues more with this episode and this helps to give it another edge over some of the lesser things we’ve seen passing for quality TV entertainment this year. This is a stance which seems to have carried on into the next (and last ever) story in the show and it just makes it all the more poignant that the wonderful Elizabeth Sladen died when she did... not only is it a great loss of a well loved human being, she was also someone who was doing quality and (dare I say this dirty word in modern society) educationally enlightening work and bringing it to the masses in a show which has now started posing questions which will hopefully make the younger viewers (that’d be the viewers who, unlike me, can remember seeing Sarah Jane the first time around when she stormed onto our screens opposite Jon Pertwee’s incarnation of The Doctor back in 1973) start to think a little more about their everyday lives other than what new video game is coming out and when the next meal is.

The Curse of Clyde Langer does, to be fair, feature some typical formulaic Sarah Jane plotting in that some of it is set in a museum, while featuring an ancient and probably “alien” evil entity changing the way characters relate to a certain regular character etc. For all that though, it is carried off with the usual panache that you would expect from a typical episode of the show and the boy who plays the comic relief/streetwise character Clyde Langer, Daniel Anthony, demonstrates what a great little actor he can be with this kind of material and I fully expect to be seeing him on TV screens in all sorts of roles for the next 40 or so years.

Another great thing about this particular show is that, unlike Doctor Who for instance, there is time taken to re-establish and then progress the characters in a particular direction... Luke has left and is now at University with K9 for instance... and this is demonstrated nicely again in this episode where Clyde continues to pursue his interest in drawing and writing comics and this becomes very poignant when, after being ostracised by all his friends in this episode, he befriends a homeless girl and uses the pages of his latest hand drawn and inked comic to burn for a fire.

During an early sequence in the episode, Clyde gives a girl who is begging in the street some money and so, when Clyde is rendered homeless and persecuted by a curse caught from a living totem pole in the local museum, the younger audience can learn the lesson of “give unto others and ye shall receive” when the same girl takes him under her wing and begins to develop a romantic attachment to him. And actually, the relationship which develops between the two characters is actually quite heartwarming and helps give the episode a real sense of edginess when Clyde has to temporarily abandon the girl to sort his life out, only to find she has been “taken by the Night Dragon”... which may not be as sinister as it sounds but leaves two characters broken hearted.

Part of me wonders if we would have been seeing more of this homeless character had the series progressed past episode 6 as planned. If so, it would have been another excellent way of continuing the well woven thread of continuity throughout the show and adding a sense of tension and release to the drama. Especially since everyone knows that Clyde and Rani are supposed to end up together... aren’t they?

Either way, I’m still saddened that the series comes to an end after the next story. It would be nice to see some of the characters spun back off from this guesting in Doctor Who (as they did during David Tennant’s reign as The Doctor) but I suspect there’ll not be much time for these periphery characters given the current climate of the “mother show”, what with all those great, long, muti-season story arcs. Still... one more story to review and that’s the end of my The Sarah Jane Adventures reviews methinks... unless any readers want me to grab the DVDs and rewatch/review the ones which aired before I started writing this blog. Any takers?

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Straight N’ Arrow

We Need To Talk About Kevin 2011 UK/USA

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: There are kind of spoilers here I guess...

although it’s pretty much all worn on it’s sleeve

from the start of the movie.

I didn’t really know much about the latest Lynne Ramsay movie, other than it had an unpleasing (to my ear) and unwieldy title and, consequently, I didn’t really know what to expect from it. My expectations hadn’t changed any after having seen the trailer either. Somebody had said, after also having seen the same trailer, that they assumed it was about some kind of devil-child like in The Omen movies. I couldn’t myself disagree with them entirely because, in many ways, the trailer was was cut like a horror movie, to some extent.

As you've probably guessed by now... I’ve not read the novel on which We Need To Talk About Kevin is based and any reference to the rather grim actions of the title character in the trailer were oblique at best. What I did know, however, is that it was directed by Lynne Ramsay, it’s her third feature length film and that I’d seen her last film, Morvern Callar, and thought it one of the most extraordinary films of that year. So, on the strength of Morvern Callar and the fact that one of the more artistically reliable actresses of contemporary cinema, Tilda Swinton, had a major role in it... I thought it best not to miss this one and I braved London as the times of the single daily screening at my local cineplex were preposterous, and watched it at a time better suited to the needs of the average cinema going public.

I was pretty sure, on the strength of her last feature, that We Need To Talk About Kevin would highlight a solid artist of the cinema directing a work which would demonstrate impeccable taste, great cinematography and a cast capable of giving some of the best performances in current cinema... and I was right. We Need To Talk About Kevin does all that and more. But for me, there were a few little negatives in their which kind of balanced out the movie so it became a little less than jaw dropping on this occasion.

The story, if the movie can be said to have one (as much as this director could be said to deal with such a locked in sequence of events that could make up such a thing as “a story”), is about Kevin’s mum Eva (played by Tilda Swinton) as she looks back over periods of her life of trying to raise an extremely difficult, hostile child, in the aftermath of a high school slaughter in which Kevin has taken a bow and quiver full of arrows and maimed and killed, not only all his classmates but also his father (played by the always fantastic John C. Reilly) and his little sister.

Eva, aggressively ostracised and terrorised by her local community in the wake of her son’s murder spree, now inhabits a world of red where the red paint from her vandalised house and car (which she is forever scrubbing away) is a constant visual metaphor for the blood on her son’s hands. The film is cut in a slightly less than linear way as visual or aural signals trigger her memory and jolt us back to different parts of her life. This kind of technique to give the viewer a slow sense of everything developing at once, like an old self developing polaroid picture will slowly fade into being all at once rather than bit by bit, coupled with the use in this film of large amounts of red, made me think of the closeness of style between Lynne Ramsey in this movie and another of my old directing heroes, Nicholas Roeg. Although Roeg’s sudden flash-back or indeed flash-forward cuts will often be a lot more dramatic in speed and intensity throughout the majority of his movies, the technique is very similar with Ramsay being, perhaps, a more laid back version of Roeg. Laid back in terms of the speed of the contrast, if you will, but not necessarily laid back in terms of dramatic gravitas, it has to be said.

One thing Ramsay seemed to be doing, and I didn’t notice this until a good two thirds of the way through the film but I suspect it holds true for the majority of the running time, is to pitch static shots against hand-held camera shots when the camera does need to move. For example, think of the cinema of Ozu where a scene is comprised of shots from locked down cameras with no motion from the apparatus involved at all... although in this movie there are certainly some of those static shots which have a lot of movement going on within the frame of the shot and which, on one memorable occasion, may trick your eye into thinking the camera is moving. This shot after shot after shot gatling gun technique creates a little jolt on the subconscious when immediately followed by a jerky, hand held shot as a character is being followed around by the cameraman and this kind of dynamism created by the juxtaposition of image types obviously gives the film a lively pacing to it which kind of seeps into you without really calling attention to itself. This is, of course, more evidence to support Ramsay’s genius as an artist of the moving image.

For me, though, there were a few things about the movie that made the final version much less than the sum of its parts, even though the thing taken as a whole was surely not a visual treat that was, in any way, uneasy to digest.

First of all, the film is being promoted with a quote implying that this is Tilda Swinton’s finest performance. Well it may be or it may not be but I don't think one could categorically say that this performance is in any way better than several of her others. And this is not to derogatise or diminish Swinton’s presence in this movie... I’ve certainly made it no secret in the past that I consider Tilda to be one of the most interesting on-screen personalities in many years and the quality of her work in this particular movie is as astonishing as some of her previous roles. It is, though, very much an ensemble piece with John C. Reilly giving good support and some absolutely amazing performances by the various actors playing Kevin at different stages of his life... you will have absolutely no sympathy for this character in any way, shape or form and his totally evil nature will grab ahold of you and not let you go.

My main problem with the movie, though, is that it never really gets grim enough for my liking. Here we are dealing with a terrible subject and a character who is all but going to pieces as she tries to cope with holding everything together... and yet we never really see that inner turmoil unleashed as something tangible on screen and nor do we see the actual events in question as they played out... only the reactions of those around the events. Now I’m not stupid (well, not completely), I realise that this muffled visual expression is designed to keep the tension just this side of the watched kettle never quite boiling and I know the actual events of the high school slaughter are designed to be more enhanced due to the audiences own imagination... and that kind of stuff usually works really well for me in that the implied narrative event will often be much more enhanced than the actual visual realisation of it. However, on this one I just needed more bleak and gloomy and ultimately the film didn’t quite measure up to my own expectations created by the set up of the films opening. But, frankly, that’s my own problem and not something a prospective viewer should worry about when going in to see this movie for the first time.

So... when we come down to it, what we really have is this. We Need To Talk About Kevin is not a film I could watch again like I could with Morvern Callar (which I’d be happy to watch at least once a year) but I’d still have to recommend it on the grounds that, despite the baggage I personally brought with me when I turned up at the cinema to watch this film... it’s still also everything I’d assumed it would be which was, to quote myself from above, a film made by “a solid artist of the cinema directing a work which would demonstrate impeccable taste, great cinematography and a cast capable of giving some of the best performances in current cinema”... so I was right all along, there’s absolutely no point in missing out on this one. Catch it before people start talking about things other than Kevin.

Midnight In Paris

We’ll Always Have Paris!

Midnight In Paris 2011 Spain/USA

Directed by Woody Allen

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Spoilers abound in this review.

I don’t often get to see Woody Allen films these days but, when I was a kid and then a teen, he was one of my heroes. Stardust Memories was one of my favourite of his movies, although I loved the majority of his work (including his “early funny ones”) and I also liked to listen to his stand up material.

These days I don’t get to see his work much because, frankly, it usually only appears on local cinema screens for one week over here in the UK if you’re lucky, if at all. For Midnight In Paris, I’d missed the week it did at my local cinema but travelled into the heart of London to catch it down there while it was still around.

Midnight In Paris belongs in Woody’s slightly more outrageous “fantasy” work if I had to try to place it or position it with any of his other movies. It’s like the plays he was writing in the 60s and 70s which had a certain fantasy element which the audience really needs to buy into and suspend disbelief with. These movies are now more prominent within his body of work but I guess he started this kind of fantasy cinema with his movie The Purple Rose Of Cairo and it’s very much a signature of his more wilder flights of fancy that he tends not to be at all interested in the mechanics which make his fantasies work on screen (or whatever venue they are in - stage play at the theatre, script in a book) and some younger audiences these days, who seem to be obsessed with the intricate plot devices to make their fantasy worlds more “believable”, may have trouble with this fact.

For me though, it’s always a breath of fresh air that Allen doesn’t bother to explain his worlds... you just have to accept them or not and move on. Midnight In Paris is a case in point.

The film stars Owen Wilson as Gil, a struggling writer who is about to marry his sweetheart but, as you will probably guess from the earliest stages of this film, he’s going to be left seriously questioning that relationship before long. While on holiday in Paris he finds a portal to the past, whereby if he waits at midnight in a certain spot, a car will arrive for him and whisk him away for a few hours back in time to 1920s Paris where he falls in with the likes of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter etc. Hanging out with the literary set gives him the confidence he needs as a writer and, when he falls in love with Pablo Picasso’s latest lover, played by Marion Cotillard, he realises that he can’t continue on with his headlong rush into marriage (especially after Hemingway clues him up that his fiance is having an affair). After he and his new 1920’s sweetheart travel back in time to meet Toulouse-Lautrec, and he sees the effect this has on her, he also finally sees that he can’t live his life in the past and that the present is always somebody else’s golden age and that he needs to live in it while it’s here.

As usual with a Woody Allen film, the direction, cinematography, script, performances and general execution of this production are all top notch and I wouldn’t expect anything less from this genius of contemporary American cinema. Woody Allen is one of the true artists of film and, while it’s easy to forget his genius due to the lack of exposure his films tend to get these days, it’s still a basic truth that the brush strokes he paints his celluloid canvass with are as relevant today as they always have been. And the strength and truth of his work is not something which can be brushed off lightly, even though his films usually have an intrinsic lightness or fluffiness in their demeanour (if not their subtext).

And frankly, you’ve got to love any film where the main protagonist hangs out in a bar with young Man Ray, Bunuel and a rhinoceros obsessed Salvador Dali (in a great little cameo by Adrien Brody) and then, when he later meets up with Bunuel again, gives him the idea for The Exterminating Angel. What a great little film this latest slice of Woody Allen’s brain turned out to be. I’m so glad I made the trip into London to see it... and I’ll definitely be picking this one up on DVD and giving it another watch next year. Great movie. Nice idea. Treat yourself to an hour or two in the company of the smart set of 1920’s Paris. A definite recommendation from this reviewer on this one!

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Have You Hergé One About A Reporter And His Dog?

The Adventures of Tintin The Secret of the Unicorn

2011 USA Directed by Steven Spielberg

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Haddock inducing spoilers

to be discovered in this article.

You know, I always liked TinTin as a kid. I remember those comic strip albums which were a little over A4 in size and which used to be fairly expensive to buy... at least the Asterix ones got rereleased and sized down to a more affordable price... but there were no smaller versions of the TinTin strips, at least no tin the UK that I remember. Consequently, I used to only get bought one every couple of years as a young 'un. I think I only ever possessed about seven of them all told, but I always read what I had of these every year, fortified by such other childhood reading delights as Jennings, Asterix and a big pile of Harvey, DC and Marvel comics.

I also used to like those bite sized 5-10 minute episodes of (cue shouting voice) “Hergé’s The Adventuuuuureeeees of TinTin” which used to pop up every school holiday just before the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials, The Adventures of Robison Crusoe TV serial and Why Don’t You (just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead)? My favourite of these TinTin cartoons was, of course, The Crab With The Golden Claws and so, when the new Spielberg directed TinTin was announced I was doubly pleased and then doubly disappointed. Pleased that Jamie Bell would be playing TinTin (what an excellent choice) but then later disappointed that this would not be a third “live action” TinTin adventure like the two French/Belgian and French/Spain coproductions of the sixties, reviewed here (TinTin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece) and here (TinTin and the Blue Oranges). I was equally disappointed when I found that Spielberg and his co-producer Peter Jackson had chosen to adapt The Secret Of The Unicorn for their movie. This was not a story I knew... I wanted The Crab With The Golden Claws or, at the very least, my other favourite (if somehow strangely baffling when I was a kid) TinTin adventure, The Cigars of the Pharaohs.

My worries for the new “franchise” were further compounded when I finally saw the trailer to the new movie which, honestly, looked a tad alienating with its CGI characters and blistering barnacled pacing. It was a TinTin movie though... so there was no way I was going to miss this one. And you know what? I’m really glad I didn’t.

My first worry, that of the CGI, very quickly wore off soon after a stylish credits sequence covering “other” TinTin adventures, punctuated by Johnny Williams unusually orchestrated (for this kind of subject matter) title music, as the film-makers made a nice visual gag, post-credits, comparing the new CGI animated TinTin to the old comic album likeness which really helped me start to lose my barriers to the technique very early on. Yes, I realised as I was watching it that this was a cleverly concocted and blatantly deliberate visual ploy on Spielberg’s part to say “look it’s okay, this is still the proper TinTin we’re doing here” and that, as an audience member I should have perhaps felt a little more insulted by this than I actually did, but I have to say that the scene did it’s job... so I couldn’t knock it too hard if it worked.

My initial upset as to the adaptation soon crumbled also, as soon as I heard the word KARABOUDJAN! Yep, this was not just an adaptation of The Secret Of The Unicorn but also a cross-pollinated adaptation of, you guessed it, The Crab With The Golden Claws... and while a large amount of that story didn’t make it into the film (including the opium smuggling elements from which the original work got its name), there were enough large chunks from this to keep me mollified throughout the length of the film. It was, after all, the story where TinTin and Captain Haddock first met... and I’m glad to say that first meeting, including the TinTin’s storage room exit with his champagne cork booby trap, made it into the film unscathed... as did a lot of the dessert sequences and the seaplane.

The story also goes into Red Rackham’s Treasure towards the end of the movie, ready to jump into a sequel where we’ll presumably, finally, get to meet Professor Calculas (who is conspicuous in his absence from this film) and his brilliant and iconic shark submarine from the story in question. That’s gonna look good on screen... I remember seeing a lifesized replica of it at a TinTin exhibition at Greenwich Maritime Museum a few years back and it brought back a rush of memories.

Frankly though, I’m doing the film a little bit of a disservice by citing all these examples as being the main reason why I thoroughly enjoyed this particular cinematic concoction. The main reason is because this is a thrifty, entertaining piece of cinema executed with, mostly, good taste and a similar spirit to Spielberg and Lucas’ Indiana Jones adventures... not that I think they’re actually trying to follow that style consciously... it just so happens that the Indiana Jones adventures and the TinTin adventures are pretty much cut from the same cloth so the way in which the narrative style has been exploited and the musical treatment of these on-screen adventurers (by the same composer as it happens) was bound to give it a cinematic echo. It’s true that the action chase sequences have, perhaps, become a little more elaborate and “adrenalised” from what you’d expect to find in a TinTin strip... but you’re talking chalk and cheese here in terms of static panels versus 24 frames per second so you can hardly find fault with this quite legitimate approach to the action and it really doesn’t ever wander off into something which doesn’t retain the spirit of those original stories. And as such... succeeds legitimately and brilliantly as a coherent adaptation (or indeed extrapolation) of the text.

I have a couple of minor criticisms which I should probably mention, however. Three, in fact.

Number one is that I missed the little surreal sequences that occasionally used to turn up in TinTin. Specifically, stuff like the bizarre and almost horrifying vision of TinTin as a champagne bottle about to have his head “de-corked” by Captain Haddock with a massive corkscrew, for example. It think there was room to include the quirkier Hergé traits in the film.

Secondly, the film was perhaps just a bit too long and although the chase and action sequences were pretty good, the final one felt like it was going to lead into an even more spectacular, climactic action sequence and, instead, led into an overlong explanatory scene and set up to the next one, which felt a little like it outstayed its welcome just a bit too much. I think the film could maybe have done with some judicious pruning in places... but it’s hard to complain too much because they did get the mix just about right.

My third grumble is fast becoming a common one on the general state of the technology these days... the 3D wasn’t particularly special or outstanding in that it didn’t add anything to the movie and was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary. Could have done without that and the extra £1.50 added on to the ticket price. What a con!

Although the actual The Crab With The Golden Claws artefact itself wasn’t bedded into the main plot, a very strong visual allusion to this and other TinTin adventures are scattered throughout the movie to keep fans happy. Mr. Spielberg also gets a cameo in a passport photo which is hilarious... until the CGI version of the character appears in a later scene and perhaps overplays the joke just a little (and if I’m not mistaken, the CGI maestro Mr. John Williams is with him in one scene). But even with these slight criticisms, I have to say that The Adventures Of TinTin: The Secret Of The Unicorn was a thoroughly enjoyable ride. Lots to recommend in this and, as importantly, it doesn’t betray the spirit of the original works. Go and see it on a big screen while you can.