June 22, 2010

Vampires are the latest craze to strike the entertainment industry, so it’s only natural that they have now infiltrated the music business. Hunter S. Thompson famously called the music industry a “cruel and shallow money trench” for “thieves” and “pimps”, but today it’s being portrayed as a home to thirsty bloodsuckers.

Rob Stefaniuk’s latest film, Suck, premiered at London’s Soho Screening Rooms on Tuesday night, and the small crowd was treated to a preview of the next installment of sexy vampire fiction…only this time, it’s got rock ‘n roll royalty.

Featuring cameos from Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins (Black Flag) and Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), this comedic spoof on the current vampire phenomenon traces the overnight success of an average, unknown band (The Winners) that drive around in a hurst, become vampires and get a taste of celebrity (and the groupies they feed on).

The Winners

Every aspect of this film makes it a budding cult classic. Not only does it also star Malcolm McDowell of A Clockwork Orange, one of the biggest cult classic films of all time, but it also has so many minor touches that music buffs will love to spot. For instance, a few classic album cover scenes are subtly recreated throughout the film, including T.Rex’s Electric Warrior, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., The Beatles’ Abbey Road and The Who’s The Kids Are Alright soundtrack. And we don’t want to spoil anything, but one vampire gets killed after being impaled with a guitar. There’s also a featured newspaper headline that reads, “Vampires Eat the Jonas Brothers”. How’s that for irony?

Alice Cooper

Suck is a Universal Pictures (UK) film. The DVD will be released in October. Suck is also an official sponsor of the Bloodstock 2010 Festival (August 13-15), which supports the Metal 2 Masses unsigned bands competition (www.bloodstock.uk.com)

Thirst

No one would expect restraint from the man that brought us the ‘Vengeance’ trilogy, but having said that, Park Chan-wook’s latest is really not for the squeamish. Like recent HBO sex-fest True Blood, both the characters and their director have a fascination with bodily fluids. Apart from the oodles of blood, guts and pustules, it is the aural rather than visual aspect that is the most obvious. Whilst the violence might occur offscreen, the soundtrack is loud and explicit. Each bite, suck and scream is lovingly detailed, and the kiss of the vampire is as tantalising as it is threatening. While being repulsed by the cannibalistic aspect of the monster, it is absurdly easy to be drawn in by the menace and allure. And indeed, he is mostly a him. Whether it’s Heathcliff, Satan or Edward Cullen, there is something predatory and seductive about these boys of ‘Byronic’ character. Thirst is still a love story though, but a by-product of its gothic bent means that it is a love story refreshingly tethered to the fleshy, gritty reality of that love – the sounds, the smells, the blood and the body.

Sang-hyun (played by Korean star, Song Kang-ho of The Host) is an affable priest who selflessly volunteers for a medical experiment in Africa, designed to combat an epidemic referred to as the ‘Emmanuel’ virus. He inevitably becomes infected, and despite a massive blood transfusion (from an ‘unknown source’) dies on the operating table. The next morning however, he wakes up. The welts and sores from the virus have receded, and Sang-hyun has becomes a miraculous, Christ-like figure in the eyes of his peers. However, the cost of his healing is a bloodlust so extreme he quickly finds himself sucking on IV tubes in the local hospital. Restored to health and settling into a routine of nocturnal blood scavenging from coma patients, Sang-hyun finds that his new found thirst also extends to other aspects of the body. He begins a passionate affair with the unhappy wife of a schoolfriend. Sex and blood intermingle,  and the love-making between the two is characterised not only by a kind of frantic desperation, but a very graphic carnality – the two suck and bite each other just to taste, licking armpits and sucking toes, the palpable physicality of sex.

Explicit it may be, but the modern vampire film is no longer able to merely recreate the sensationalism of Nosferatu – it is self-aware enough that these gothic tropes are not only used for shock-horror, but also to say something profound. Think of Del Toro’s Cronos, a superlative vampire film that is really about time and aging, or perhaps the Swedish ‘kitchen-sink fantasy’ of 2008’s Let The Right One In, that offers a grown-up, cerebral mirror to the (pre-)teenage alienation depicted 1987’s The Lost Boys. Like these films, Thirst presents its viewer with the ‘Satanic’ aspect of the vampire myth – the fallen angel. It is certainly no accident that Syang-ho is a Catholic monk, wracked with guilt and haunted by visions of Christ and the devil wherever he looks. The thirstiness however, as with all vampire stories, is a question of the transfer of energy – the vampire drinks from the living to maintain himself, just as Tae-ju, the unhappy housewife, feeds off Syang-ho to satiate her hankering for a feeling, an escape from the drudgery of her marriage. It is a film that is light and dark, romantic and horrible, and plays out faithfully the dichotomy between the pleasure / pain impulse – the increased virility and the crushing weight of damnation, the state of passion and illness that is both nightmare and fantasy.

During the run up to Christmas (and don’t tell me you’re not already feeling that Christmas kick in the air…) I’m going to be taking a look at some recent and not so recent DVD releases to entice (or dissuade) your festive purchases (or rentals…). The Office: An American Workplace has been out on DVD for a while now but was recently rereleased in a nifty and affordable box set, containing seasons one, two, and three, which you can now pick up for under twenty quid (available from all good online retailers – you know the ones), so without further ado…

It was with much trepidation that I first started to watch the American remake of the British classic. I, like most of the nation, shed a tear when Dawn returned to give Tim that kiss and it scared the hell out of me that someone was going to mess with that perfect TV moment. The original 12 episodes (and those note-perfect Christmas specials) redefined British comedy and transformed Ricky Gervais (undeservedly?) into the worldwide star he is today (star of A Night At The Museum 2!).

In fact, the pilot for The Office: An American Workplace is simply a rehash of sight gags and dramatic pauses that worked far better in the dulcet British tones of the original performers. It’s not dreadful, but it’s not original, and that makes it redundant. Why watch a rehash of something you’ve seen done better before? However, as the course of the first season progresses, our protagonist Michael Scott (the versatile Steve Carell of Little Miss Sunshine and The 40 Year Old Virgin) becomes someone who we are able to sympathise with. He’s by no means a likeable guy but he gives the character a childlike innocence which makes him a little less grating than David Brent and gives the show the longevity it needs to sustain the 22 episode American format.

Once the teething problems are over, The Office becomes one of the finest American sitcoms, probably ever. I would argue that the writing on television is more interesting than anything on at the cinema right now. Television is no longer a throwaway medium. DVD and online on-demand programmes allow viewers to consume television in concentrated doses and also means that they never miss an episode. This allows for a far greater sense of continuity than older programmes that you could just dip in and out of. The Office benefits from the extended length and, whiles never falling into a Friends style descent into soap opera, it allows relationships to develop and change. Over the first three seasons we see a variety of romances between the characters and the dynamics are constantly evolving amongst the staff of Dunder Mifflin.

The Office’s greatest strength is in the development of the minor characters. In the English counterpart, they were just familiar faces but the American version casts fantastic character actors who are the true stars of the show. Against the drab setting of a paper company these characters seem larger than life but remain true to themselves and consistently funny. For example, Kelly (played by Mindy Kaling, a writer of the show) begins as a one-note Indian joke and is then given a relationship with office temp Ryan (B.J. Novak, another writer) and her character is revealed to be sweet yet obsessive and wholly naive. Kaling plays her as incredibly annoying yet incredibly vulnerable and consistently amusing. Similarly, the stern and uptight Angela (Angela Kinsey) starts off as a one-dimensional thorn in everyone’s side and is then given a softer side with the introduction of a surprise secret romance. My personal favourite character quickly became the ineffectual HR advisor, Toby (Paul Lieberstein), whose recent divorce has made him basically give up on life. He is the bane of Michael’s life and manages to do this without doing much at all. Lieberstein’s subtle and understated performance doesn’t go for the big laughs but manages to flesh out the character and make us feel for him. It is rare that a television show doesn’t feel overcrowded with more than about six major characters and The Office manages to juggle the lives of about twenty main characters. No easy feat.

The DVD features definitely give the viewer an appreciation into what makes this show work. It becomes clear from the commentaries that the makers cast established comics to take the most minor parts and the serialised format allow them to tweak things over time according to what works and what doesn’t. Like any good show, it learns from its mistakes and this is why it is such a slow burner. The show also employs some of the best directors working today including Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon and Ghostbusting Egon Spengler himself, Harold Ramis. Ramis contributes to some audio commentaries and reveals he is as much of a fan of the show as anyone else. The audio commentaries span about 20 episodes throughout the second and third seasons and are almost as entertaining as the show themselves. Featuring most of the cast and behind the scenes personnel, they are an interesting insight into the making of the show, and also track the rising stardom of Steve Carell as different participants comment on his evolving superstar status.

All the episodes are all presented in anamorphic widescreen and almost all of them feature a wealth of deleted material which offers up material which is just as good as what ended up in the show. I would definitely recommend checking them out. The DVDs are rounded out with ‘made for Internet’ webisodes, trailers, bloopers, and an on-stage cast interview which runs for about 20 minutes. The 9 disc box set offers a wealth of bonus material for such an inexpensive set. The only downside to the box set is the box itself. It’s made of a flimsy cardboard and is a completely different size to any other DVDs. It also features no episode guides or booklets so good luck revisiting a specific episode without a little trial and error.

Whether as a gift or something to keep you entertained through the cold winter nights, I would highly recommend The Office: An American Workplace. It benefits from the DVD format in that you don’t have to wait too long to get through the shaky start and at under 20 minutes each, they are incredible… more-ish. The second and third seasons were undeniably the shows’ strongest so far and include such memorable material as Michael’s homocidal improv class, Dwight’s Macbeth style takeover of the office, and Pam and Jim’s first kiss. The episode plots are mostly throwaway but each has at least one or two genuine laughs which is rare for even the funniest of sitcoms. Forget the inherent baggage it carries from its English predecessor and just enjoy one of the greatest and consistently funny American comedies since Seinfeld. The only downside is that the UK are still yet to see a release of seasons four or five but sales of this box set might prompt someone to do something about it. Do yourself a favour and pick this one up.

Jennifer's Body

In 2008, an ex-stripper won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. She probably wasn’t the first ex-stripper to win an Oscar… but it was a bit of a change for the sometimes conservative Academy to award one if its prestigious gongs to a woman who wasn’t afraid to be provocative and whose name means Devil in Spanish.

If you’re lost as to who I’m talking about, it’s Diablo Cody. And the film she wrote was Juno – a sassy, funny, warm account of teenage pregnancy. It really was the screenplay that made the movie – Diablo’s idea of how (American) teenagers talk and act was probably not at all accurate, but, hey, it was witty to think that some of them do indeed talk on burger-shaped phones.

Diablo’s follow-up to Juno (but actually written at the same time as the former) is a different style of film altogether. Jennifer’s Body is part-horror, part-comedy, part-sexual fantasy, part-wha?!Starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried as ironically stereotypical best friends (Megan is the sexy and vampish, Jennifer, whereas Amanda is the supposedly innocent and bespectacled, Needy), Jennifer’s Body tells the completely realistic story of the time when a local band, desperate for success, decide to make a pact with the Devil. In order to do this, they must sacrifice a virgin to Satan. Unfortunately for them, they pick on Jennifer…who is clearly not a virgin. And what happens when a non-virgin is sacrificed? According to Jennifer’s Body, they become possessed and must go around eating people in order to survive.

Thus begins a slew of deaths and some of the most annoying dialogue ever featured in a film. If Juno’s script was snappy and ironic, Jennifer’s Body’s just grates. Lines such as: ‘You give me such a wetty’ and ‘You are so lesbi-gay’ are, I’m sure you’ll agree, Pulitzer-prize winning material. Not that our annoyance stopped my friend, Maryam, and I from quoting the script for days after the screening. Because that’s the thing about the film: as much as it’s irritating, groan-inducing and ridiculous, I have to admit, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure.

Megan Fox

The other elements of the film? Well, let’s see, erm…okay, Megan Fox looks smokin’ hot throughout. But that’s about it. Let’s be honest here, the girl can’t really act (although the bitch character really becomes her for some reason?). Amanda Seyfried fairs a little better as the geeky heroine of the film. Adam Brody (late of The OC) is clearly loving every second as the quick-witted lead singer of the Satan-worshipping rock group. And the boy certainly suits black eyeliner.

Underneath all the glossiness though, it’s a bit depressing that this film was female-scripted, female-directed with two female leads… and it’s actually quite inherently misogynist. Female characters are either highly sexualised maneaters (literally) or boring ‘Plain Janes.’ Oh and the two share a very forced semi-lesbian scene. Of course. Maybe that’s just the climate we live in nowadays, but do we women really hate our own gender that much? I’m sure that’s not what Diablo Cody was intending, but unfortunately that’s the impression it gives. And this is where my guilty pleasure starts to turn sour.

But I know you’re intelligent readers, so you’ll probably just take this film with a pinch of salt…

(500) Days Of Summer

‘Offbeat’ romantic comedy, (500) Days Of Summer serves as a kind of catharsis for writer Scott Neustadter, following the dubious maxim quoted in the film, that ‘the best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature.’ The quote is actually one of modernist author and notorious bastard, Henry Miller, and the film opens with a rather aggressively Miller-ish disclaimer that flashes up on screen: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely co-incidental… Especially you, Jenny Beckman… Bitch.”

Bombastically proclaimed by the Daily Mail as “the greatest revenge in the history of cinema”, the film is a dance back and forth throughout various days in the year long relationship and subsequent emotional fallout of Tom Hanson and Summer Finn, a couple in their mid-twenties, employed at a greeting cards company in LA. Pastel animated scenes (of a gradually withering tree – bleurgh) act as chapter headings in the narrative – Day 340, Day 20, etc – letting us know which of the ‘days of Summer’ we’re in. “Tom, I know you think she was the one, but I don’t,” says Tom’s sage-like younger sister, Rachel. “Next time you look back, I think you should look again.” This ‘looking back’ is the film – a retrospective on a relationship.

The film opens as Rachel Hanson jumps off her bike, walks into Tom’s apartment (where Tom stands, smashing crockery on a sideboard with a blank look on his face), and says, ‘Right, start from the beginning’ (which obviously he does not). ‘The beginning’ alone however, is enough to give anyone cause for concern. Tom and Summer are riding a lift together at their work, when her reaction to hearing ‘Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ blasting out of Tom’s headphones, is to sing a couple of lines of the song and yell at him, “Oh yeah, The Smiths. I really like The Smiths.” Tom’s reaction is, “HOLY SHIT.” This, in itself, spells trouble. Honestly, who does that? And who gets that excited about someone liking The Smiths?

As Woody Allen says in Annie Hall (to which (500) Days owes a great debt) whilst sifting through the pieces of his own failed relationship, ‘I have a hyperactive imagination. My mind tends to jump around a little.’ Tom Hanson’s memory is also rather subjective. Thus, the film is able to (despite being lauded as ‘realistic’ by critics with a bar undoubtedly lowered from the week The Ugly Truth and The Proposal came out) escape the restrictions of a realistic narrative, and show its audience Tom’s warped reminiscence of the failed relationship he obsesses over. As a result, his post-coital morning walk to work become a Gene Kelly-esque musical number, high-fiving passers-by and being carried through the park on the shoulders of euphoric supporters, and his crushing post-breakup lows see him casting himself as the moody hero of Godard and Bergman-esque, black and white French films. These odd little vignettes are interesting enough to draw away from the MIND-NUMBING BANALITY of their karaoke/Ikea/job/bar day-to-day.

Summer is underdrawn (as you would expect from a film penned by ‘the ex’), and Tom is, to be honest, a bit whiny. Someone once said that the act of reminiscence involves a necessary splitting of the self, which becomes both the person in the memory, and the person doing the remembering. Unfortunately for Scott Neustadter and Tom Hanson, two parts of the same whole, both these people are tools. Funny at times and gratingly annoying at others, the film is redeemed by its inventive direction and the almost disturbingly likable Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. The soundtrack is deftly used, and as indie as you would expect, including standard ‘quirky couple necking to Feist’ scene, and montages so cutesy they could be an extended advert for mobile phone tariffs.

In contrast to which, The Time Traveler’s Wife (sic) consists of a film that tries its darndest to murder some excellent subject matter. Having been described variously in the film press as ‘sentimental slush’ and ‘a bulletproof concept’, this rather cack-handed film is carried by what is a fantastic skew on the traditional, linear romance – a familiar concept in unfamiliar surroundings. Rather than a relationship retrospective like (500) Days, Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire find themselves in the unfortunate position of having a kind of ‘future memory’ of their life together, due to Bana’s character’s genetic abnormality, ‘chronic impairment’, as in his liability to spontaneously time travel at any moment – a bit of a pain in a marriage.

Henry’s time travel is involuntary, and he becomes ‘unstuck’ in time, jumping back and forth between moments in the course of his life with Clare, played by a doe-eyed Rachel McAdams. Clare, it should be explained, acts as a kind of metaphysical anchor for Henry’s jumps – she is the place (and time) that he always returns to. The effect is that the couple (and the audience), experience the relationship out of sequence, but whereas in (500) Days, this was a knowing, formal device designed to emphasise various ironies and flaws in Tom’s relationship, in Time Traveler’s Wife it goes some way towards making the whole thing more poignant. The couple’s wedding for example, that Henry disappears from, missing the ceremony but returning just in time to slow-dance to a waltz version of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (sung by Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew for some reason, who winks at the camera before presumably wandering off to collect his ‘random cameo’ award). Or the traumatic experience of gestating a child liable to time-travel out of its mother at any moment.

The film performed well at the box office, surprisingly – the demographic of people who enjoy both a Rachel ‘The Notebook‘ McAdams romance and time travel is, one assumes, not massive. But then, it completely ignores any of the scientific aspects of time travel, concentrating instead on social effects of the condition. The genre mix is what is interesting though, and it elevates what is essentially a standard relationship between two bookish New Yorkers into something more. Time Traveler’s Wife is essentially two films – a romance, and a science fiction movie. The film is as odd as its well-crafted (if unneccessarily long) source novel, although it tries to squeeze an awful lot into 90 minutes, and as a result, is rather heavy-handed at times. The script is contrived, the supporting cast all but ignored, and everything is spelt out for the viewer in a rather patronising way (both protagonists are constantly saying “I know this must be weird for you”, which is INFURIATING). There are some beautiful moments though, and while (500) Days Of Summer is an irritating subject carried out with panache, Time Traveler’s Wife is an interesting idea, carried out with the filmic equivalent of a big, fat hammer.

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins

I suppose you could see this as a companion piece to my ‘Phantom Menace’ review, another prequel no-one asked for. I’m not really sure anyone asked for ‘Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed’ either; one of the most unpleasant cinematic experiences I can recall in the past ten years. It was everything bad. I know that’s not a sentence, but it was all kinds of proper bad; insincere, illogical, condescending, and it haemorrhaged money all over the screen.

It was with some trepidation that I approached a return to the live-action Scooby Doo universe. And, surprisingly, I didn’t hate it. You could probably stop reading the review right there. But no, there’s more. It was, in fact, OK. I might even up that to a pretty good. Ask me in a few weeks.

The plot concerns the creation of ‘Mystery Inc,’ and the tale of how an awkward teenage boy found his perfect match, in the form of a dopey (talking!) dog. Oh, and the school, ‘Coolsville High,’ was built over another school which was destroyed by a flood many years ago. So obviously there are ghosts. Obviously.

The plot is a mish-mash of a bunch of other movies and shows (‘Poltergeist,’ ‘The Frighteners,’ every ‘Scooby Doo’ episode you’ve ever seen) but it keeps things simple. Hands up who liked the first ‘Scooby Doo’ movie when the bad guy was revealed to be Scrappy Doo on steroids? No? It’s the familiarity and innocence of ‘The Mystery Begins’ that works. The story doesn’t really matter because this is a kid’s movie, and unlike the other live action works, it doesn’t try to offer anything for the adults who are watching except shameless nostalgia. There are no obvious winks at the camera, no drug references, and no high-wire kung-fu. What we do have is a scene of someone pulling off a ghostly mask and revealing one of three suspects (yes, there are only like three suspects), plenty of comical disguises, and a healthy dose of “jinkies,” “zoinks,” and “Scooby snacks.” These are what you want from a ‘Scooby’ movie and this is what the film offers. With no extra padding. In fact, the story moves swiftly and doesn’t dwell on such trifle matters as ‘where do ghosts get off interrupting the big game?’ and ‘why is the dog walking on two legs?’

The performances from the unknown cast are pleasant, inoffensive, ‘High School Musical’ esque versions of the cartoon’s four characters, thankfully minus the cynical stunt casting of the previous films. Bearing in mind this is a children’s film, I would also have to commend the cast as role models. Shaggy’s a sensitive young soul, Velma shows that brains are more valuable than beauty, and Fred doesn’t beat the crap out of Shaggy once the credits start to role (because he’s a jock and that’s what movie jocks usually do). Daphne bothered me for channelling some Hilary Duff. (This review isn’t pretending to be highbrow affair by the way). The core gang get to know each other through a ‘Breakfast Club’ inspired detention sequence complete with all the usual high school movie clichés, but once we’re done with that, the group generally look out for each other and don’t seem fazed by the usual teen-movie hang-ups of social groups and appearances. The innocent banter between the group and the pro-active way they approach their mystery-solving extra-curricular activities were conducted sans whining and fighting and there weren’t any scenes of ‘so-and-so feels alienated so goes off in the other direction…’

Director Brian Levant has directed such family fare as ‘Beethoven’ (one of the finest dog-based family comedies) and ‘The Flintstones’ (uh oh) but he, and I hate to repeat a phrase, keeps things simple. The film is shot in bright, colourful, Nickelodeon-tween vision. The CGI ‘Scooby’ is quite terrifying to begin with (particularly in a slow-motion shot early on), but you get used to it and learn to embrace the animated-style. The film exists in a world where dogs talk so why shouldn’t the dog look a little unreal? If I had any real complaints, it’s that ‘Scooby’ was pretty superfluous considering the film was named after him, but this was obviously due to budgetary limitations as much as anything else. However, the always-reliable Frank Welker voices ‘Scooby’ and the familiarity of the voice is a nice reminder of the classic cartoons.

Also in the plus pile, the film managed to incite two genuine smiles from me (one ‘Kill Bill’ inspired slow-mo sequence in particular) and the ghosts would probably have been just the right side of frightening for the very young. They weren’t terrifying (and didn’t pose any real threats short of waving their arms in front of them) but they were mildly gruesome (and proceeded to take over toy aeroplanes from which they were able to shoot real bullets – amazing!).

Obviously, it’s not a perfect movie. The intrusive score plays like a cheap knock-off of the ‘Desperate Housewives’ theme tune and the film has ‘straight-to-DVD’ written all over it (particularly the re-use of shots and the obvious attempts to exclude ‘Scooby’ from as many shots as possible). The plot is simple and aimed exclusively at kids (or the ‘Scooby’ obsessives) and the lack of original ideas is glaringly obvious. But this film wasn’t made for me, and I reckon if I was eight, I’d sit down pretty happily for the 80 minute runtime.

The DVD offers an interactive personality test (I am ‘totally shaggified’ apparently) and a couple of short featurettes (none of which deal with the making of the movie) and the film is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with a clear picture quality and 22 chapter stops. Nothing to write home about content-wise but fine for the kids.

Ultimately, ‘Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins’ is a nice, innocent reboot of live-action ‘Scooby.’ Don’t rush out to buy this expecting a high-budget, high-quality affair, but pick it up as a perfectly fine Halloween diversion for young children (or the young at heart).

Dorian Gray

Out: September 9, 2009

Okay, so I love Oscar Wilde.  I love his put-downs, his witticisms, his lurid sex life and his writing.  This, of course, includes his one and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1890 to great notoriety and criticism.  If the Victorians were shocked by the debauched acts of the novel’s eponymous anti-hero, a modern-day readership is probably just as shocked that it’s not nearly shocking enough.

But forget reading, we’re here to talk about films, and a new adaptation of Dorian Gray (they’ve dropped the prefixing three words) is hitting the big screen.

Starring Ben Barnes as the beautiful Dorian, the story – in a nutshell – follows young Dorian after he moves to London to inherit his late uncle’s house.  Entering onto the social scene, he encounters two gentlemen who become his friends and initially exert the biggest influence over him: artist Basil Hallward (Ben Chaplin) and aristo Lord Henry Wotton (Colin Firth).  Both enamoured with the gorgeous young man, they devote their time taking him under their wing.  Basil decides to paint his portrait and once Dorian sees it, realising his incredible beauty for the first time, he makes a pact that instead of himself growing old and decrepit, the picture will ensnare his soul and suffer instead – he will remain forever young.  Lots of debauchery and crime ensues, with Dorian not ageing a day, whereas the picture becomes uglier and uglier with every sin committed (sprouting maggots at one point – lovely).

So what of the 21st Century Dorian? Ben Barnes is actually a very good fit in the role.  He is beautiful in a pretty boy way and is thus able to project a butter-wouldn’t-melt aura even when he’s doing his worst.  And he does some pretty fine acting to boot.

Ben Chaplin is good as artist Basil and Colin Firth does well as an older and supposedly wiser gentleman  – with added eyeliner.  The only thing that sort of jarred with me was the presence of his daughter, Emily Wotton, played by Rebecca Hall.  Not in Wilde’s original novel, the character was created in order to give Henry Wotton a ‘moral compass,’ according to director, Oliver Parker.  But I thought the point was that no matter how lurid and scandalous Henry Wotton appears and would like to be, he never goes as far as Dorian does because he has his own set of principles – and he doesn’t need a daughter to give him that grounding.  Erm, rant over.

Back in 1945, the first film adaptation of the novel starred Hurd Hatfield as Dorian and Angela Lansbury as his doomed lover, Sybal Vane was released.  I remember seeing this when I was younger (after reading the novel) and being just a little bit terrified.  Although the 2009 version didn’t make me tremble or even go ‘wow’, it’s still a very beautiful film.  And therein is probably it’s best element: the gothic Victoriana of the sets and the costumes is just wonderful and, to be fair, as a piece of cinema it does work well.  I’d just rather read the book.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

It’s the day before the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but do we care? Apparently so. We have a film section y’know! Here’s some thoughts from our filmxpert, Maria…

Released: July 15, 2009
Dir. David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon

Confession: I’m not a big Harry Potter fan.  I’m not even a small HP fan – to the chagrin of many of my friends, I’ve only read the third book and the last ever chapter (but that’s enough right?).

However, I’ve still seen all of the film adaptations and get a tingle of excitement every time I hear the familiar, magical few notes of John Williams‘ score that introduces each new film.  As hard as I resist, it draws me back in…

And now we’ve come to the sixth installment.  Harry and friends are 16-years-old, maturity and hormones a-raging.  Literally.  There’s action of the romantic kind in this action adventure film – but more on that later.

The Half-Blood Prince is probably most famous in being the ‘one where *somebody* dies’.  Oh and being darker than everything that’s come before, which it certainly is.  The first couple of scenes are of a grim-skied London being terrorised by Death Eaters, destroying the Millennium Bridge while they’re at it. (Tut.)  This early onslaught sets the tone for a HP film that seems to be getting to the core of the evil that Harry must ultimately face.

But let’s not dwell on that, because the filmmakers sure don’t.  Although Harry continues to try and fulfill his destiny as ‘the chosen one’, what seems to be most important to him and the rest of the adolescent Hogwartians is snogging.  Yes, there’s tons of it.  Harry and Ginny Weasley.  Ginny and her boyfriend Dean.  Ron and new girl Lavender.  Even Hermione is romanced by Quidditch stud, Cormac (who does some impressive gesticulating with his broomstick handle when trying to entice her).  Of course, they’re normal teenagers whose hormones are in overdrive and they can’t get enough of each other.  But please, there’s a world to save or something.

When they do remember this fact, the action in the film is superb.  There’s a genuinely scary bit in the middle when Harry and Ginny are at risk in the middle of a cornfield.  The tension is irresistable.  But there’s not enough of that in my opinion…until the ending.  And even then it’s not as impressive as it should be, according to my friend Jenny (a Harry Potter aficionado, if ever there was one).

The leading actors are still learning on the job, but they are, of course, sufficiently outclassed by their more experienced co-stars: Jim Broadbent as Professor Horace Slughorn and Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix LeStrange are particular standouts.  (The latter, in particular, relishing in her villain status.)

But all these great, small elements, just don’t add up to a great film, sadly.  It was diverting enough, but parts of it left me confused and other parts of the story, that are so widely known, obviously then didn’t pack the punch that they were supposed to (although the identity of the Half-Blood Prince was unknown to me, so that was a pleasant surprise).

This film will be a huge hit whatever’s said about it, because it’s HARRY POTTER.  But avid readers and devotees may find it a bit wanting when all’s said and done.  And those that aren’t …well they might just end up confused.

‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,’ the most anticipated film of all time (?) was released into cinemas and bankrupted poor old book publishers, Dorling Kindersley.

After wildly overestimating the hunger for all things ‘Star Wars’, they were left with crippling debts and more Amidala journals than they knew what to do with. And they weren’t the only victims of The Phantom Menace’s marketing black hole and critical disappointment; ‘Phantom Menace’ merchandising was still flooding Poundland shelves as recently as last year, and a whole bunch of collectors hoarded their ‘Darth Maul’ figures, only to realise they were worth practically nothing on Ebay. The Phantom Menace single-handedly ruined lives and alienated a whole generation of film fans. However, it has been ten years since Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released into cinemas and changed the face of cinema (rightly or wrongly) forever. In retrospect, it is definitely worthy of a revisit. The dust has settled, the backlash has calmed, and Jar Jar Binks doesn’t seem quite as annoying as he seemed in 1999.

This preview premiered on Friday, 20th November, 1998, and was the most downloaded trailer on the Internet (back when trailers were just about all you could get on the Internet). It also prompted thousands of fans to pay for cinema tickets only to leave before the main feature started. It was the perfect example of aggressive film marketing paying off, and Team Lucas teased just enough to get fanboys wetting themselves, and not enough to indicate that the film just might not live up to their dizzyingly high expectations.

The teaser poster suggested that Episode 1 was the ultimate coming of age movie; Stand by Me meets The Omen; a dark tale about a boy’s journey into the horrors of adulthood. What the poster didn’t indicate was that said journey would be told from the perspective of a nine-year-old who uses the phrase “wizard” too much and his computer-generated posse.

Not only that, but Darth Vader was not even on the horizon and the ultra cool bad guy with the horns from the trailer was only in the film for a total of ten minutes, max.

Never has a film been more a victim of its own hype than Star Wars Episode I. The initial marketing frenzy suggested a film that didn’t exist, and fans were left wondering - what went so very, very wrong?

Perhaps the biggest flaw with Episode I is that the story being told is not cinematically dramatic; there is no sense of what’s at stake and no sense of urgency to the heroes’ quest. The narrative is framed around a blockade of a trade route and the (non-violent) invasion of a planet. However, there are obvious missed opportunities and this definitely wasn’t a space-bound Die Hard. The villains are ineffectual and clumsy, the rescue of the Queen was far too easy (where was the trash monster?), and the final battles are unspectacular. Not to mention the plodding sidetrack to Tatooine and the most tedious sequence thus far; political speeches in the senate.

Lucas stays as far from the darkness of the story as he possibly can, and there is no narrative hook to keep us interested. Who cares if the Queen saves her planet? She ditched it in the first 30 minutes! Why do we want Anakin to become a Jedi? We don’t even know who he is? And the political subplot might pay off later, but it slows the film to a dramatic crawl which it never fully recovers from.

I’m sure the publishers thought they were onto a winner when they came up with an idea for the tweeny journal of Queen Amidala. Supposedly this book even features pictures of each of her different outfits. Yay? This was just another symptom of the underlying issue; you can’t make an uninteresting story, well, interesting - no matter whose perspective you’re telling it from. And Lucas seemed too interested in having his fingers in all the pies and saturating the market, as opposed to telling a thrilling yarn. The tweeny Queen writes awesome things in her awesome journal - is this Star Wars or 90210? And, not to be sexist, but since when did teenage girls show any interest in Star Wars? They certainly didn’t at my school (in Lucas’s defence, at least he was eager to please).

Enough with the bashing! I honestly believe, over time, that The Phantom Menace has blossomed as the best of the prequel trilogy and is a visually exciting and underrated cinematic oddity. Strong words?

Well, the screen isn’t as overbloated as the further instalments (glorified computer games) and the visuals truly have an olde-worldie (?) feel about them. From the lavish costumes to the sweeping landscapes, the attention detail is sublime. John Williams’ score is a refreshing mix of new material and classic themes, and the performances of Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor, whiles not exactly Oscar-worthy, are admirably serious and feel authentic to the Star Wars universe.

The film’s rampant merchandising also ensured that Lucas had to enrich his story with ancillary characters and backstories, allowing viewers to pick up new details with each repeated viewing. The frame is never flat or empty. This also led to a marketing frenzy – the toys that accompanied the film could only get so much mileage out of the six or seven main characters so kids were treated to the delights of ‘Palace Guard Number’ and ‘Gragra’, the equivalent of your local corner shop worker. Lucas created a film with the potential for children and adults alike to imagine what else might be going on in this universe. Shameless cash-in or creative genius?

Only time will tell, but I would like to believe the latter statement. No-one spots a money-making scheme better than Lucas, but nobody fills a film with ‘Gragras’ and ‘Palace Guards’ like Lucas either. The universe feels complete, full, and functional.

Ten years later, we can still feel the ramifications of the film’s successes and failures. No film has been marketed to death the way The Phantom Menace was, but no film has attracted the levels of intense media and public interest either. Did it make moviegoers more cynical? Is getting excited about new releases now a worthless endeavour? Probably. But it also led to a revisit of seemingly dead franchises (Indiana Jones, Battlestar Galactica) and marketed itself straight into Poundstretchers and Right Prices (RIP) across the country. It captivated the imagination of children and catapulted cinema directly into the digital age. And it brought us ‘Jar Jar Sex Candy’.

Now, about that ‘Jar Jar Sex Candy…’ Lucas was criticised for making a French kissing Jar Jar Binks toy, as per this story.

“Shame on you, George Lucas” indeed. This particular toy/sweet/abomination is a true masterpiece - how many other films inspire alien sex toys with edible tongues? I can’t think of any either. For that reason and that reason alone, The Phantom Menace stands out as a trailblazer like no other.